


The Alien Overlord's Guide to Earth

by Jairissa



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Invasion, Aliens, F/M, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-09
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-18 06:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 59,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jairissa/pseuds/Jairissa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an alien race subjugate earth Darcy is content to stay in New Mexico and hide until it's over. When her boss' not-boyfriend and his super-powered boy band blaze into town expecting sanctuary and assistance, all her plans are shot to hell.</p>
<p>Instead Darcy finds herself fighting aliens, making new and terrifying friends and adding a whole lot more embarrassing moments to the list of things that will be trotted out in toasts at her wedding or funeral (whichever comes first).</p>
<p>She also appears to be the only one not getting laid, which proves that whatever Gods are out there, they hate her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the marvel_bang 2012. 
> 
> Beta-ed by acadecian, who has my eternal and sincere gratitude.
> 
> Art is by the wonderful adrian-chan.

**[Guide (548.32.0001): Earth/Midgard/Gaia/Terra]**  
Current population: 7 billion (approx) dominant, innumerable other.  
Governmental Structure: Fractured

_"Earth" is a midsized planet, populated by diverse lifeforms. The dominant species is currently believed to be "humans", a relatively advanced group that contains approximately 7 billion individuals. The land is comprised of continents and islands, separated by large expanses of salt water. There is currently no unifying government. They have not yet progressed past the tribal warfare stage, the medical infrastructure is substandard and laws favour warfare and injustice._

_Immediate intervention is required._

_It is clear that current conditions are unsatisfactory. Weapons are not yet at a level to threaten invasion or defence forces._

**Recommendation:** Invasion. Secure major cities (population  > 1 million). Standard governmental power handover, minimum casualties preferred.  
 **Prediction:** Little to no resistance. Expected adaptation to change in less than three full planetary cycles.

Prologue: Formation of the Anti-Invasion League (formerly known as The Avengers)

Her asshat college roommate had been wrong. Dancing around Jane's cramped lab, bumping into tables and cheering was not the best reaction to an impending alien invasion, but hell. Darcy hadn't been a "paranoid pot-addicted weirdo", and if she ever sees Ginny "my tits are bigger than my brain" Haddock again she'll raise her long abandoned penis shaped bong in triumph and repeat her victory dance all over the evil bitch's _face_.

"Didn't you turn that bong into a potplant?" Jane asks her. This is why Darcy loves her boss. Hell, science geniuses in general are wonderful, they have the best memory for random facts and anecdotes you'd told them over welcome to the ass-end-of-nowhere Jagermeister shots. So what if they forgot things like food, consistently wearing pants and paying the bar tab for their new assistant? You don't have to remind them of reasons why you're right, they just know why you're so damned happy.

"It can be repurposed," Darcy sings, wiggling her hips and dislodging the highly expensive astronomical thingy S.H.I.E.L.D had sent over to replace some of Jane's more temperamental equipment. Jane grins; she has some sort of _thing_ against government bought apparatus that work the first time they're switched on, rather than requiring banging with wrenches, the sharp smell of soldering and the sort of swearing that Darcy hasn't heard since that summer she stowed away on a fishing boat and ended up talking her way into a job. "I _told_ her there were aliens out there, I _told_ her they'd want to be our evil overlords and I _knew_ it didn't have anything to do with that Mystery Science Theatre marathon over spring break. I am AWESOME. And also probably a little psychic."

She shoots Jane a little side-eye glare, but she doesn't get the derisive snort she expected. Jane looks pensive, and she is tapping the whiteboard marker she had been making notes with before their decrepit old television had flared to life and informed them that their government was now in the hands of some gigantic purple and orange fashion disasters called the Bysrah. 

"I wonder how that would work," Jane muses, and crap, now she's stuck in some sort of science feedback loop that Darcy has no chance of getting her out of. "Would it be strictly biological? Or is there some sort of metaphysical component to it?"

"You're supposed to be telling me there's no such thing as psychics," Darcy reprimands her sternly. "Not encouraging my uneducated delusions."

"I wouldn't call a graduate student uneducated," Jane grumbles, but she stops tapping the pen and has enough awareness of her surroundings to put it back where it came from, which is such a great achievement in Darcy's patented _See, They Can Be Human Too: Scientists and You_ training course that she adds a pirouette to her next lap of her triumph dance. 

"How many doctorates do you have again?" Darcy collapses on her recliner, bought for $10 and her last joint from an accountant who was leaving Puente Antiguo in a huff after finding out that just because small towns were friendly, the Bilson Brothers were not going to put up with him sleeping with both their sisters at once.

(Darcy had totally had a chance to do that. She respected the sanctity of older siblinghood enough to realise that it absolutely wasn't worth having her brain bashed in by a tire iron.)

"I hardly see how that's relevant," Jane says, sticking her tongue out. Darcy flicks the switch on her chair and sinks back into torn-cushion luxury. All she needs is the big screen TV and she'd have her own little movie theatre in the corner of the lab. Jane had tried to get her one for her birthday, but it turns out that S.H.I.E.L.D's auditing department is smart enough to realise that astrophysicists don't need HD LED TVs to ‘properly examine and analyse star patterns’. "I get bored easily."

"Oh, that makes sense. How does that conversation go? 'Oooh, I'm bored. Let's see, I could go see a movie, cost me maybe twenty bucks, or get another doctorate and have like fifty grand more in student loans…'," she says, tucking her feet underneath her and hanging over the edge of the green-checked fabric.

"I'm still banned from the cinema here," Jane says, and her disappointed confusion is so adorable that Darcy tosses her Mr. Muggles, the lab's resident stuffed cat, to cuddle. "I just don't see what's so wrong with pointing out the logical inconsistencies in Independence Day."

"I think it was more the volume that bothered them," Darcy reminds her, sliding her iPhone from her pocket and taking a picture of Mr. Muggles getting the stuffing hugged out of him by, if Darcy factors in sheer ability to destroy things and ignores intent, one of the scariest women she's ever met. She tilts her head to the side, considering. "Do you think our new alien overlords will have subsidised education plans for poli-sci majors?"

"Is that really the concern you should be having right now?" A male voice asks from the entrance to the lab. Darcy is so stunned that she forgets to scream. Jane doesn't, damn that pesky science-memory thing. She screams so loudly that Darcy cowers, covering her ears and whimpering.

"Oh my God, they've killed us all. They have. We're dead, and this is the afterlife," she moans. Jane's pout is legendary to behold, more potent than Darcy's long-practiced one, and it is put to its best effect when holding a kid's toy. "I can't believe this is the afterlife. What a disappointment. Where are the shiny Gods?"

"You're not dead," Coulson tells them dryly.

Darcy finds this so personally offensive that she's moved to abandon her beautiful dreams of free education. She's never been the most athletic person around, so she's beyond amazed when she crosses the room in three long strides and slaps the man full across the face. He looks surprised, baffled actually, and Darcy is unaccountably proud of herself for what's got to be close to three full seconds.

Then the pain hits.

"Ow, ow, ow," she moans, clutching her hand to her chest pitifully. "What's your head made of, Mjolnir or something?"

"I thought it was pronounced Mew Mew?" Coulson asks. Darcy stares at her uninjured hand mournfully before raising it and slapping him again. It isn't the best idea she's ever had, but she's not exactly operating at full capacity here, so she figures she can be excused for it.

"That was a perfectly understandable misunderstanding, asshole," she says. She holds her hands out to Jane who makes her own, slow way across the messy floor. The soft, Mom-quality kisses Darcy receives on each hand makes up for it, though, and she lets Jane pet her head affectionately while she sulks. "I went and looked it up later."

Jane, to Darcy's complete bewilderment and delight, starts to frisk the scary government agent. Apparently Darcy's not the first person to assault him, because he winces when Jane rubs her hands over his ribs, and makes the most adorable face when Jane's tiny hand gets just a little too close to his groin.

"Uh…Jane?" She asks, as Jane's frisking starts to look an awful lot like groping. Coulson is looking at Darcy as though Darcy has the smallest amount of authority over her boss, and Darcy is mentally rolling her eyes when she grabs Jane by the waist and tugs her away. "That's…probably not the most appropriate thing you can do right now."

"I have to see if he's injured," Jane points out, as though that makes sense at all.

"We have doctors for that," Coulson offers and Darcy nods her head along, taking a firm hold of Jane's wrist, just in case.

"I am a doctor," Jane says. It's more of a huff, really, an _I'm not paying three quarters of my salary to student loans for nothing, so you'd better use my damned title_.

"Wrong kind of doctor," Darcy says, wishing she'd thought to tuck candy in her pocket when she got dressed this morning. Jane is ridiculously easily distracted by sugar; Darcy had once tried throwing a chocolate bar out the door when she'd decided her boss needed real sunlight and Jane had chased after it like a puppy following a bouncy ball.

Three hundred thousand views on YouTube wasn't bad for a thirty second video. Darcy's only slightly ashamed of herself for it.

"That's not why I'm here," Coulson says, drawling so heavily that he sounds like the fanfic version of Draco Malfoy, back when Harry Potter had been Darcy's whole world.

"Yeah," Jane realises slowly. Darcy's seen her calculate fractal algebraic equations or whatever the hell those things are called in her head, but common sense seems to take forever. "Isn't this your thing? Did you fake your death to get out of dealing with it? Do you think that would work for parking tickets?" 

"I don't blame you," Darcy says, wrinkling her nose. "That purple and orange alien thing made my brain hurt. Also, were they actually naked? Because I could be offended by that."

She's granted twin raised eyebrows, and all her sympathy for Jane goes out the window. She lets go of her boss' wrist; if she's going to get attitude, then she's going to let the woman get arrested for sticking her finger too close to the Man in Black's no-no bits. 

"I'm not," she says, just to clarify things. "But I could be."

"That's the reason I'm here," Coulson says. He looks so relieved to be getting to the point that Darcy considers offering him Mr. Muggles to help calm him down. Then she remembers that he _faked his own death_ , and while she hadn't been too impressed with the whole iPod stealing thing, he hadn't deserved to die for it. Darcy had actually cried for the jerkoff. 

"Because you faked your death?" Darcy tilts her chin up, putting on her best stubborn expression. "That was kind of a douche move, you know? Then you didn't even invite us to your funeral."

"I'm not actually dead," Coulson says. Darcy figures this isn't his best day ever, because he goes straight past his standard patient impatience and gives an actual sign of annoyance, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "There was no funeral, and if there was I wouldn't have been doing the inviting."

"It would still have been nice to be invited," Jane muttered. Darcy remembers the tears on her boss's face when she found out, how she'd learned that the same say she'd found out that Thor hadn't come back for her, and how they'd both remembered that the last thing they'd done in Coulson's presence was compare him to a fascist dictator.

She also remembers scrambling to find a decent, non-boob flashing dress in Puente Antiguo on a grad student budget and most of her guilt is eradicated. 

Most of it.

"I hope you don't want us to help," Darcy says to fill in the awkward silence. "Our last encounter with aliens, hereby known as He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, didn't exactly end so well for us."

"Loki was here?" Coulson demands. He looks frightened. Darcy steps back, slightly terrified that she's about to get frisked herself, and there's no way that's going to happen when she's wearing her ratty old Monday underwear as a stand against the frustration of Thursdays.

"We can say Loki," Darcy reassures him. "We've actually got lot of names for Loki. We'll tell you some of the more imaginative ones later, if you want. No, I'm talking about the _other_ Asgardian dickhead who promised to come back for Jane and, as I'm sure you're aware of, _didn't_."

There's a crash from outside. Darcy stands on her tiptoes, craning her neck to see over Coulson's shoulder. He twists around, blocking her view from every angle she contorts her unfairly inflexible body into. Eventually she gives up and tangles her fingers together, cracking them threateningly. 

"Ah. That one," Coulson says. His no longer terrified, but he does seem nervous and Darcy narrows her eyes.

"Yes. That one," she says flatly. Her glare is nothing on his, but she uses it as best she can, and curses being born unthreatening as a kitten. "He's out there, isn't he?"

"Yes-" Coulson starts, rearranging his tie.

"Because if he is, I'm going to kill him dead," Darcy finishes.

"Maybe," Coulson amends his previous statement, and does his best to block the door. 

"Thor's here?" Jane asks. Darcy can hear the tears in her eyes. She smiles, rubbing a hand reassuringly over her boss's bony back. Jane curls into her, looking tiny and young, her eyes so big she could qualify for her own anime series. 

"No," Darcy says quietly, sliding her arm over Jane's shoulder. "He's not. And he _never will be_. Because he is forbidden to cross this threshold, remember? We did that ritual and everything."

Coulson sighs. Darcy only catches it because he doesn't think she's looking. How hard it is for him to breathe in deeply enough to let out a breath that long? She resists the urge to poke at the place that hurt when Jane touched it, her natural curiosity demanding she find out exactly how badly he is hurting. She distracts herself by retrieving Mr. Muggles and letting Jane transfer her iron cuddling grip to the nerveless cat.

"I'm sorry, Agent Coulson," Darcy says formally. She tries batting her eyelashes, but that's never gotten her very far with Coulson before. This appears to be just as true as it was when she tried to convince him that Jane needed a constant supply of decent beer to continue her research, and a handy new bar fridge to keep it cold. "What can we do for you? Or to you? Because we should probably make up for the whole hitting you thing."

"You're not the first," Coulson says, but he has that tiny half-smile she has come to recognise as the real thing. "Actually, it's a little complicated."

"Complicated as in the ass-hat Norse god who dumped me _without having the guts to say so_ is waiting outside?" Jane asks darkly. 

"You weren't dating," Darcy tells her for what must be the thousandth time. "Not officially."

"But he was so pretty," Jane moans sadly. "I wanted to see him naked."

"I think I speak for everyone when I say we _all_ wanted to see him naked," Darcy announces theatrically. When her boss doesn't fall for that gambit, Darcy plunders her pockets desperately, coming up with a stick of gum and a dusty gummy bear. It's a difficult choice, but the gum is blueberry, so she hands it off to Jane silently and waits for her to calm down a little.

"I didn't," Coulson reminds them, and hey. He was still there.

"Right, sorry. We're paying attention, I promise," Darcy assures him. She's not normally this spacey, but the earth was taken over by aliens this morning, and if she wants to retain some sense of not-panicking sanity, she needs any distraction she can get. Someone coming back from the dead, admittedly, should have been a bigger deal than it was, but aliens. How can you beat that?

"We need somewhere to stay," Coulson says abruptly. Darcy has to respect getting straight to the point.

"By we, you mean…" Jane prompts, rendered slightly more reasonable by the sugar hit from the gum. 

"The Avengers. Me. Two of S.H.I.E.L.D's high ups. Tony's ex girlfriend-"

"They broke up?" Jane asks sadly. "Damn. I was really rooting for them."

"Yeah, I love Pepper," Darcy adds, resolving to delete the Pinterest board she'd made with the best tabloid photos of the two of them. She'd really been hoping those two crazy kids would make it. Plus, with Pepper's organisational skills and Tony's smarts, the kids would have been the evillest super villains ever, which tickles Darcy to no end. 

"We all love Pepper," Coulson says, and _oh God_ , he's _blushing_. That's beautiful, it really is. It's also going to end in absolute disaster for everyone involved if Tony ever finds out. Thank all the deities there are that Darcy splurged on popcorn in their last grocery run.

"We don't have much space," Jane frets. She wraps the gum around her finger and tugs, Clueless style, although she doesn't pull it off quite so well. It gets stuck to her pointer finger and by the time Darcy manages to rescue her she's somehow managed to get some of it in her _hair_. Now they're going to have to go to Annie Bilson's granddaughter's trailer park hair salon, and that is a fate Darcy's been desperately trying to avoid.

"I thought you were going to upgrade this place with your symposium pay check," Coulson says. Jane blushes, and Darcy starts to whistle. Coulson's eyes narrow; he looks as though he wants to hit them both, which must be a record for how quickly they've pissed someone off. "What did you spend it on?"

"Student loans," Darcy and Jane say in unison. The effect is somewhat mitigated by the wide-eyed, overly-impressed gazes they shoot each other. Coulson's eyebrow stays raised, and he stares them down until Jane cracks, the weak woman she is.

"New mattress. Donation to an animal shelter. Alienware gaming computers," Jane mumbles, ashamed, because the World of Warcraft addiction they'd both fallen into rather than potentially grieving Thor isn't exactly the smartest thing they've ever done.

"Computers?" Coulson asks, blankly.

"Really good ones," Darcy points out. She may or may not have named her shiny red one Iron Man and set the keyboard colours to red and yellow, something she isn't about to admit when the man himself is possibly standing outside her makeshift home.

"Right," Coulson says thinly, raking his hand through his hair. It looks messy, which makes him look exhausted. Darcy kind of regrets the combination of their natural craziness and the desire to mess with him. "Well, we brought trailers, we just need somewhere to park them, access to power and someone who's not going to hand us in to the invaders before we have a chance to stop them."

"We can do that," Darcy says reassuringly. She thinks about it for a moment, about the hard mattress she's squeezed into on the floor of Jane's old trailer, and decides to push her luck. "If one of them is for me."

Coulson shuts his eyes briefly, but he nods and when he opens them again he looks cheerful enough. He turns for the door, then turns back to them, slightly disconcerted at how intensely Darcy and Jane are examining him.

"Are you two always this crazy?" He asks finally.

"When we're sleep deprived, terrified and in shock?" Jane asks, resting her head on Darcy's shoulder. "It's just easier than being scared."

"Gotcha," he mutters. If anything follows that Darcy's prepared to pretend she didn't hear, because she is grateful that he's alive, that Jane might have a chance for some resolution with tall and douchey, and that this whole alien thing might not be a permanent problem.

***

Darcy's new trailer is _awesome_. She assumes it was originally meant for someone else because there are only ten trailers, which corresponds perfectly to the ten guests that have just shown up. It's also decorated in a red, white and blue scheme that is so patriotic that Darcy's recited the Pledge of Allegiance three times so far just so she doesn't feel guilty for not being on the front line of whatever the hell this invasion thing is.

She's magnanimous in victory, so when Jane shows up looking sad at all the space she has Darcy kindly offers to let her bunk with her in the king sized bed they've somehow managed to squeeze in here. It's so big that Darcy's fairly sure she and Jane can share it without even realising there's someone else there, which brings a big smile to Jane's tense face.

That's also the time she realises, with a slap to her forehead, that this trailer must have belonged to _Captain America_ ; that sort of takes the fun out of it, especially when she and Jane work out at least eleven completely different schemes in which they could have tried to trick Captain Muscles into sharing with one or both of them.

Neither Jane nor Darcy are spectacularly great at sharing. That ass, however, is something they've both agreed is worth it. Plus it'd be a brilliant way to stick it to Thor and point out that he's absolutely lost his chance.

Speaking of Mr. I Know They Don't Have Phones In Asgard, But That's Really Not An Excuse, he's knocking on the door again. Darcy ran out of expletives she could use on him an hour ago, and has resorted to making some up in other languages, in case the whole Allspeak thing is actually real instead of just an excuse for a fancy English accent. 

She waits through the soft knocking, much more polite than it was two hours ago. Some of the frustration from Jane's wandering about entirely unsure of what to do with herself leeches into her amusement at teasing Thor and Darcy gives up, wrenching the door open in fury.

It's nor Thor; it's Pepper Potts, one of Darcy's absolute idols, and she's looking embarrassed. Darcy kicks herself, a sharp knock of her boot to her shin, putting her best grin on her face.

"I'm sorry, I heard that…never mind," Pepper says, pasting a practiced smile over her lips. She starts to walk away and Darcy panics, grabbing her arm and pulling on it until Pepper stumbles on to the steps and into the trailer that Darcy is decidedly not giving back when all of this is over. She looks a little afraid and Darcy lets go, patting at her arm in alarm.

"No, no, my fault," she babbles, gesturing to the huge living room thingy. "I'm sorry, my bad, it's totally my fault. I'm not kidnapping you, really, I just thought you were the Norse God of douchebaggery and we're mad at him right now."

"That's why I'm here," Pepper says. For a second Darcy thinks that Thor has sent her as an intermediary and is stuck between wanting to fangirl a bit more and kicking her in the crotch. Then she notices the sad resignation in her expression, the same one Jane wore for a week before Darcy properly funnelled it into anger.

"Do we need to have another name-storming session?" Darcy asks, sympathetically. Pepper's brow furrows. Darcy grins, big and wide. "It's like a brainstorming session, but involves less coming up with something brilliant and more thinking of bad names for the ex."

Pepper laughs. She's so pretty that Darcy almost can't bear it. She takes the taller woman's hand, guides her to the fluffy, star-spangled couch and tucks some pillows in around her. Jane, still in the ratty pyjamas she'd rolled out of bed in, curls up in Darcy's recliner. It had been a bitch to drag in, and there's more than a little damage to the edges of the door, but it's not home unless your favourite chair is there.

Raiding the fridge, Darcy figures that five thirty is more than late enough for them all to start getting plastered. Pepper needs it, Jane will likely cave again unless she has some liquid courage, and Darcy gets to be the 'voice of how great singleness is' again, which is an important role, sure, but is getting a little old. 

"We don't have much," Darcy shrugs, handing Pepper a cheap beer. It's the second worst thing available in Puente Antiguo, the first worst being the bootleg liquor that the Harris boys have been making in their bathtub for three generations. Darcy dreads the day a poor girl is born into that family. "Alcohol's kind of low on the budget, after Jane's candy addiction and the debt collectors that have us on speed dial."

"It's fine," Pepper assures her. Darcy actually believes her, which just makes her fall in love a little more, because someone who can be that graceful about beer this crappy? Is a quality person in Darcy's book. 

"Tin can?" Jane says randomly. Darcy frowns at her, wondering if the beer has gotten so bad that it's actually sending Jane insane. Jane makes a face as she skulls down more, which has to be dangerous, and shudders. "God, that's awful. Sorry. Are we not at the bad names thing yet?"

"No, we are," Pepper says, shrugging her shoulders.

"That was just a really bad one," Darcy frowns, putting a really old bowl of mixed nuts rescued from the lab's kitchen on to the makeshift coffee table. Then she plonks herself down on the couch next to Pepper, because hey, if feeding and watering implies ownership of a dog, she doesn't see why she can't use that same logic for a human.

"I know," Jane says sceptically. "Iron Man's really hard. He didn't even come up with that name himself, which makes it far less effective as an insult."

"That's probably a good thing," Pepper says. Darcy doesn't understand how she can't be gagging as she drinks; the first time Jane and Darcy tried this brand Darcy threw up all over Erik's shoes. It was great for getting the dude to buy them better beer, but their stomachs suffered for it for three days afterwards. "With Tony's ego we would have gotten something like Stark the Magnificent, or Genius Man."

She looks sad again, and that's just not on. Sadness is infectious, and it took a lot of long, hard drinking sessions to break Jane out of hers; be damned if she's going to watch her fall straight back in. She's a maudlin enough drunk as it is, and Darcy's wearing her favourite t-shirt. She won't have it besmirched with soggy scientist tears.

"Is this the part where I have to tell you what happened?" Pepper asks, sounding strained. Darcy and Jane shake their head in unison, holding their bottles in the air until Pepper clinks hers against theirs.

"Nope," Darcy says, injecting as much cheer as she can into her voice. "That part might never happen. This is the part where we all get drunk, insult our exes and end the evening in a stunning display of pyrotechnic mayhem."

Pepper looks alarmed, placing one hand over her stomach. Darcy can't imagine someone as terminally responsible as Pepper Potts would drink while pregnant, so the poor woman must have assumed that was some sort of allusion to group throwing up on stuff.

"No, no," Jane interrupts quickly, having apparently come to the same conclusion. "We mean actual pyrotechnics. Darcy smuggled fireworks in from Mexico the last time she went, and we have a huge stash in the lab. It's a great way to end the night."

"Is that legal?" Pepper asks dubiously. Jane and Darcy eye each other and shrug.

"Does it matter?" Darcy asks rhetorically. 

Apparently it doesn't, because a few hours later, after the sun has set and Darcy and Jane are too drunk to remember how badly this had gone the last few times they'd tried it, she's right there beside them, lighting things, realising she's far too close, and running away shrieking. They manage not to burn themselves, although poor Mr. Muggles suffers a serious scorch mark. Calling the vet is debated, then discarded in favour of true, loving home-medicine (an Avengers Band-Aid with Thor and Iron Man mercilessly inked out).

As it turns out, Pepper had been responsible for the breakup; apparently running Tony Stark's business and personal life was very different to _being_ Tony Stark's business and personal life. The man also had no talent for hiring practices, because the business!Pepper Potts replacement dates had been and gone three times before she'd said stuff it and left.

Jane and Darcy agreed that Pepper had been completely right: Tony had _so_ been supposed to follow her with flowers, jewellery and a new (unattractive male) personal assistant. Once a few tears had been shed, a few more things blown up and better beer sent for she had been surprisingly okay with things; the poor woman had just been looking to blow off some steam, and Darcy is the queen of that.

"So you're the only woman that came?" Jane asks, after they've all hidden themselves under Darcy's trailer. They probably should have realised that loud bangs in the middle of an alien invasion wasn't the smartest thing to do, but this whole situation is just so absurd. For all they knew the broadcast had been a total hoax, and things were going on as normal.

Yes, the presence of the Avengers should have told them otherwise, but Darcy's pretty good at not connecting the dots when she doesn't want to.

"No, Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow, is here. So is Maria Hill, Fury's 2IC," Pepper says. Her expensive suit is ruined, covered in dirt, ash and the last of Jane's poptart supply; she still looks better than Darcy on her best day. She should be jealous, but the whole hating a woman for being prettier or smarter or less insane than Darcy was so utterly not her thing. 

She has Aunt Penny to thank for that: a gender studies professor at Columbia, she had brainwashed Darcy early. 

"So why aren't they here?" Jane asks. It's another reason why Darcy loves Jane; she totally gets the whole strong women thing.

"I'm not sure-" Pepper begins. Darcy cuts her off with a wave of her hand that clunks against the underside of the trailer and makes her palm, still sore from Coulson's thick, stony head, ache. 

"Kidnapping run!" Darcy declares. Jane cheers. The leave Pepper there, blearily repeating Darcy's words, and crawl out from under the trailer. The immediate danger seems to have passed. There are no obvious men with guns, most of the shouting has stopped and their pile of unexploded fireworks has vanished. Darcy takes a moment to mourn them, cheering up only when she remembers that with Pepper Potts funding them, they could well end up having an infinite supply of cheap, hideously dangerous explosive devices.

Darcy marches to the trailer next to hers and bangs on the door. When it opens she finds herself face to face with Captain America, the same beer that she has gotten herself sloshed on in his hand. The Iron Asshole (the best they could do under the circumstances) is unsuited behind him, slightly bloodshot and more than a little dishevelled.

"Is Black Widow or Haria Mill here?" Jane demands. Darcy takes the opportunity to ogle a little, because asshole or not, they're both extremely pretty. She keeps her hands to herself, despite her base impulses; this is girl's night, and Captain America's tight uniform clearly indicates that he does not fit into that category.

"No…" Captain Tightpants draws the word out, slow and soft. "Are you two…"

"Goodbye," Jane announces and slams the door in his face. Darcy giggles, finding this so funny that she doubles over, gasping for breath. Jane gives her a pitying look and moves on to the next trailer, repeating her staccato pattern of knocks. 

"Is…" she starts, then notices it is Thor, his face lit up with joy, at the door of this one. He gets no goodbye. When the door slams Darcy hears nose slammed against it, and a little squeak that she knows will be painted as a manly gasp of pain come morning. He wrenches it back open, bleating a little _Jane_ , and is rewarded with her best glare. "Die in a fire."

"I think they're in your lab," Pepper says, having extricated herself from her nest. Her Louboutins, so gorgeous that Jane had cried a little, are swinging from her finger recklessly. Darcy cheers, scrambling in her pocket for the candy she had restocked earlier. Pepper accepts the mini-chocolate bar easily enough; even warm and melty from being in Darcy's pocket it doesn't smudge on her fingers.

They are, indeed, in Jane's lab. 

"Kidnapping run," Darcy informs them. They look at her as though she's grown a second head. Admittedly, depending on how frizzy her hair has gotten, it could well look as though she has, so she forgives them magnanimously. Jane takes a hold of who Darcy assumes must be Maria Hill while Darcy takes Black Widow's hand. She's heard the horror stories, she half expects to be stabbed before she gets very far, but there is no protest as Darcy begins to drag her away.

"You're drunk," Natasha advises Darcy.

"You're Russian," Pepper points out. She has a bottle of vodka in her hand. Darcy's not sure where it comes from, but she's officially calling it right now: Pepper Potts is a saint, and Darcy will happily be her first acolyte when the new religion starts. 

"We're in the middle of-" Maria starts. She has a gun in her hand. Jane rolls her eyes, and Darcy wishes she could be this unafraid of everything.

"Let me guess," Jane says, whirling around on the two new inductees to their group. She points her finger at a man that Darcy's sure isn't a pirate, but unquestionably should be, and jabs it a little in the air. " _He_ is talking. _You_ are trying to give reasoned and well-thought out ideas, and are being shot down because _he_ is positive that he's right, like penises have some magical power that grants knowledge."

There is a long silence while Natasha and Maria exchange glances that speak books worth of information in seconds.

"You're still drunk," Natasha points out.

"I'm still _right_ ," Jane tells her. Darcy can't tell if it's because they don't want to hurt a drunk employee or because they agree with her, but Natasha and Maria allow themselves to be dragged off. Natasha, as predicted, can drink them all under the table, and Maria has a beautifully sarcastic sense of humour that propels her straight to the top five of Darcy's Favourite Women Ever list. 

Three of the four others are also in the room with her. By morning they're as drunk as Darcy. Darcy takes that as a win.

***

In retrospect being hung over the morning the New World Order is announced might not have been the best of ideas. Darcy alternates between trying to watch it and throwing up in the bucket that has appeared from somewhere. It means she only catches scraps, but it's better than missing it altogether. If she did that she wouldn't be able to show her face in her politics classes ever again, which would be a complete waste of four and a half years of her life.

_"Effective immediately, all governmental processes will be handed over to our public planning division…"_

_"All laws, policies and punishments will now be handled by…"_

_"Previous infractions of all 'human' laws will be forgiven…"_

_"Clean slate…"_

_"Believe in the highest sanctity of sentient life. Medical facilities will be constructed and, unless an imminent danger to others, no 'human' will be harmed…"_

_"All weapons are now outlawed. Anyone caught carrying…"_

_"Jobs and tasks assigned by…"_

"They make it sound like a corporate takeover," Jane says hoarsely. Darcy has no illusions that the world is fair enough that she'll be suffering from a hangover, Jane's like a magical creature when it comes to not feeling sick, but the horror and fear that Darcy can't parse through her nausea are a fairly valid trade. "Like they're just…"

She doesn't notice when Thor pulls his chair up beside her, and doesn't fight when he places a hand on her shoulder. Her brown eyes are twinkling in the dim light of the television and the rising sun, tear tracks staining her cheeks. She looks up at him; Darcy hasn't seen her look so sad since they'd discovered that the animal shelter in Puente Antiguo was at risk of shutting down and being forced to put all the residents to sleep. 

"Can't you _do_ something?" Jane asks, partly to Thor, mostly to the rest of them. "You…you stopped the rest of them, those other aliens…"

Something crosses Thor's face; he looks lost, just as sad as Jane. Darcy wishes they'd tell her what had happened already. She'd pieced together as much as she could from shaky cellphone footage and the occasional uninformed news report, but the whole day had been a clusterfuck of destruction and misery. Apart from the ten new people in this room, no one seemed to have the faintest idea of what had actually gone down.

"I wish it were that simple," he says, in the soft, rumbling voice he had once reserved just for Jane. Darcy hates him for it, for the way he pops in and out of her best friend's life and then vanishes without bothering to say a word to her. She fingers her breakfast fork, unused because the smell of eggs had made her retch, and wonders what it would feel like to jam it directly into the meaty hand that is caressing Jane's back. "I have never heard of these Bysrah. Their army is impressive."

"I don't know how they've done it," the not-pirate says. Darcy can almost believe he's sorry, that he cares about this, that his carefully constructed authority is just a façade he's putting on to seem scary. "But they've vanished all our big weapons, severed any communications between military groups and taken a sizable portion of congress hostage. At this point, there appears to be literally nothing, on any reasonable scale, that we can do."

"Well what about an _un_ reasonable scale?" Darcy asks a little hysterically. She obviously hasn't studied enough, because none of this makes any sense at all. She's sitting next to a Norse God; she can buy that there are technologically advances species out there, some of which would have the know-how to pull off something like this. She can, obviously, even buy that there's an alien species out there that would want to subjugate them for some nefarious reason. What she can't buy is that she's spent the past four years studying history, politics, military movements and in spite of all that _she can't think of anything to do about it_.

"Like terrorism?" Captain America asks. Of course he goes to that, he's so damned patriotic that he'd think anything that's not kissing the government's ass is terrorism. Darcy knows she's being unreasonably harsh, but she's also more than a little glad that she threw up all over his star-spangled carpet last night. She's giving his trailer back when she's done with it, and she's going to make damn well sure that no one cleans it, either.

"Like guerrilla warfare," Natasha corrects him, looking thoughtful. She taps her long nails against her cheek; her hair is a darker red now, and it's grown longer than it was when Darcy saw her on TV. She's kind of rocking the look, Darcy approves. "She might have a point."

"Wouldn't that make us an 'imminent danger'?" The Iron Asshole asks, making air quotes with his hands. Darcy glares at him, because that's what The Sisterhood of Better Superheroes does, even if they're mere support staff without any real superpowers. 

"Only if we're intending to harm them," Natasha says. She has a little smile, like plotting the demise of a race of alien overlords is the best kind of fun. Maybe it is. Maybe that's where Darcy's been going wrong all this time; she should have spent less time studying, and more time doing frightening spy-like things that would have taught her the best way to kill Norse Twats with a breakfast fork.

"So your plan is…" Captain America prompts. Darcy really should start thinking of him as Steve, because that's what he told her to do right before she almost threw up all over his overly-bright costume. Steve sounds slow, almost stupid, but she knows that behind that is a fierce intelligence that's thinking everything through very carefully.

She hopes it is, anyway. Otherwise they're all kind of screwed.

"Be as visibly annoying as we can," Natasha finishes, smugly.

"I'm up for that," Tony says. Darcy knows in her gut he's been waiting for something exactly like this for years, because his eyes are lit with an unholy glee that makes Darcy want to crawl back under her trailer and hide. 

"I don't believe that would be the best of ideas," Thor protests. Jane whimpers a little when he pulls away from her. Darcy leans over and slaps her out of principle; all those hours of trying to make her stop thinking of Thor have been thrown away because of one touch of really, annoyingly, hot man-god. Jane looks affronted, shaking her head unhappily.

"Thank you," she mouths to Darcy, but she doesn't pull away. Half a victory is still a victory, though, so Darcy pushes her cold plate of bacon and eggs over the table and lets Jane fill in a bit more of the bottomless pit she calls a stomach.

"Why not?" Another man that she hasn't seen before has apparently joined them. He's cute, in a Darcy wants to nail her professor kind of way. Scruffy, but he's hardly alone in that at this table. Judging by the ink stains on his shirt and fingers and the fact that Darcy inexplicably wants to mother him, he's got to be another scientist. She regrets giving away her eggs now, but he's found a plate somewhere, so she lets her head fall back to the table with a groan. "Sounds like a good start to me."

"It's your brother again, isn't it?" Stark says. It's grumpy, and snarky, and everything she expected from him, but it's also a little afraid; Darcy knows she didn't imagine the little waver in his voice. She definitely didn't imagine the way every Avenger in the room simultaneously turned to glare at either Fury or Coulson, and she _really_ needs to know the story behind that. "This is his newest plot to take over the earth? I knew we shouldn't have trusted that unbreakable Asgard prison thing."

"People take inspiration from their heroes," Thor says. Darcy peeks out from below her lashes and sees him rubbing Jane's back absently, which yes, is kind of adorable. There was a dirty look directed at Stark in there, but mostly he seems to be surrounded by this shame force field, which reminds Darcy of her last one night stand. "If we cause trouble, even if we claim it is harmless, they will believe it the right thing to do. They may not show the same restraint that we do."

They all consider that; Darcy mainly considers when Thor became the smart one of the group, but behind all the bluster and thundery strength she realises that Thor was pretty clued in. Totally lacking in social niceties, sure, but he's done pretty well considering how new to the whole earth culture thing he is. If she was tossed, unprepared, onto Asgard, Darcy would likely not do all that much better.

"He has a point," Maria says unhappily. "We don't want to cause more trouble…"

"I'm not too worried about trouble," eye-patch rumbles. "I'm more concerned about this clean slate they offered everyone."

"They can't mean…" Maria starts, worrying at her lower lip.

"I think they do," Fury says, and everyone in the room seems to get something that Darcy doesn't, because they all blanch. 

"Even the ones in prison?" Jane asks in a small voice, and oh god, yes, that could be so very very very bad.

"Can't we try talking to them?" Darcy has been a fan of the diplomatic solution since she talked Greg Perry out of beating her up in the third grade by promising to introduce him to the stunning lifeguard at the local pool that occasionally babysat for Darcy on school holidays.

"We have," Fury looks at her as though she is to be pitied. He might be right, but he doesn't have to be quite so obvious about it. "They see no reason to negotiate; as far as they're concerned, they have exactly what they want."

"A quiet war, then," Natasha suggests. Darcy has the feeling that she's just stuck on the idea of some gigantic intergalactic prank war and doesn't want to let it go. Darcy voices this comment, withering under the mix of impressed, unimpressed and outright murderous stares the scary people level at her. Even if she wasn't hungover, she wouldn't be prepared for this.

"Phil?" Fury asks. Coulson, apparently now a ninja master of hiding, appears from Darcy's right and she shrieks, nearly falling off her chair before she can right herself. "What do you think?"

"There seems to be no good solution either way," Phil hedges. Most of the people in the room who aren't Darcy, Jane or Fury refuse to look at him. Darcy is glad she's not the only one who's mad at him. She's starting to get a fairly good idea, based on his level of pain, aliveness and general aloofness, which people have hit, struck, or otherwise beaten him in one way or another. "But if we combined Natasha's solution, minus pranks, thank you Darcy, we might be able to show them we're able to mount some form of resistance, as well as using the time to gather more information about what we're up against."

Darcy sticks her tongue out at him. It's a shame. She's not entirely sure how the Bysrah use the bathroom, but she's fairly sure the clingwrap thing would work with whatever species you were attempting to annoy. Her cousin had used it on the family cat, once, and ended up in hospital because, at first glance, it had looked like he had attempted to slit his wrists. 

"We might be able to get the word out, too," the archer dude whose name Darcy can never remember says. He's stroking his bow in a particularly creepy way, but if Darcy could get her hands on Mr. Muggles, she doubts she would appear all that sane either. "If we can hijack their communications equipment we should be able to get out messages to what's left of the other governments and intelligence agencies. Might even be able to get messages out to the general population, see if we can inspire some proper, less dangerous rebellion."

"You've got a point there," Fury says, and Natasha grins like the Cheshire Cat. "All right. Standard recognisance at first. Cause what damage you can to their infrastructure and personnel _without getting caught_ and for fuck's sake, don't listen to either Lewis or Stark in what that should consist of."

Darcy makes a wordless squeak of outrage. It's matched by Stark's. They eye each other curiously while Fury barks orders over their heads. It's a shame that Stark might not be so bad if he weren't a sworn enemy of the Sisterhood. She's about due for an entirely inappropriate crush, and the only people left are Fury (the eyepatch would terrify her if she woke up to it in the middle of the night), Coulson (would feel too much like necrophilia) and Banner (she suspects he turns into the Hulk). 

"Won't all this be hard from New Mexico?" Darcy props her head on her closed fist and tries to keep her eyes open. "They seem to know enough about us to realise that the centre of government isn't the middle of the desert."

There is a long pause. Darcy decides it's because they're stunned at her brilliance, rather than waiting for her to catch up to a long list of things they've already decided. Someone clears their throat; Darcy's fairly sure that it's doctor probably-Hulk, and tunes out a little until Fury makes a decision. She can't be the only one who thinks that taking orders from someone named Fury is a bad idea, but since they're not asking her Darcy can't summon enough energy to bring it up.

"We'll have to split into strike teams," he says finally. It sounds all complicated and military-ish to Darcy, and she argues so loudly when he tries to exclude her that he finally gives in and assigns her to the team that contains Natasha, Thor, Jane, Dr Definitely Hulk and, on a strictly as necessary basis, Pepper Potts (when she's not running Stark Industries and trying to look all innocent for the review teams that are apparently suspicious Stark's still building weapons). "Which gives each team flight capabilities and a nice mix of espionage, intelligence and military expertise."

"Won't they get suspicious if they keep seeing the same people in the places where all this shit is going down?" Darcy pushes. She senses that Fury's getting tired of all the questions, but hell, Darcy's seen a hundred of these movies. The people that don't ask the right questions die, and she's not enough of a virgin for blind luck to get her through to the end.

"We should switch members out," Steve suggests when no one else does. "Mix up the groups every week or two, and make sure we never hit the same place twice."

"That," Fury says decisively, and looks specifically at Darcy when he continues. "Any more questions?"

"Yes," Darcy says, gearing herself up for a good sulk. She doesn't voice any of them; he doesn't deserve her wisdom. When he's captured by the aliens and probed in uncomfortable places, he'll wish he'd listened to her.

"All right. We've got a few more things to go over this morning, but the longer we leave it, the harder it'll be," Fury says. Maria Hill raises her hand, like they're still back in school, and Darcy's estimation of how well this little rebellion will go drops by thirteen hastily invented points.

"Sir, just so I'm clear," Maria says when Fury nods his head at her. "We've been invaded by aliens who've left us helpless in less than twenty four hours. Rather than fight back openly, we're launching what is, essentially, a large scale, no fatality, low damage and general pointlessness campaign against the new government in the hopes of getting some vague intel and, if we're really lucky, showing them that we'll be about as irritating to them as a mosquito?"

There's a pause. No one can bear to look at each other. Darcy watches her hands; they're shaking, and when she can't get the trembling under control she sits on them. She's never been a proponent of 'if you can't see it, it doesn't exist', but that strategy sounds damn good right now, and it's not all down to the hangover. 

"When you put it like that," Fury admits quietly. "It sounds a little ridiculous."

"It's completely ridiculous," Maria mutters, and at least someone is in the right mood, because she sounds downright rebellious. "I just wanted to make sure we're all on the same absurd page."

"Right here with you," Stark says. Darcy nods and raises her hand, wiggling her fingers in the air. Fury closes his eye, presses his fingers to his nose in an echo of Coulson's gesture yesterday, and seriously? Do they teach that at spy school?

"You, you and you with me," he says, pointing at Steve, Natasha and Maria. "The rest of you, go pack, meditate, prepare yourself, whatever. And repeat to yourselves: _I will not get caught, because everyone else is too busy to come and save my ass_."


	2. Chapter One

**[Action Plan 1.35.0021: Identification]**

_With seven billion humans, we will be relying heavily on our technological advantage to make up the shortfall in our active forces. It is most important that we permanently identify as many humans as possible; as all who have signed up know, they are adept at trickery and falsehoods. Permanent identification chips have been designed and produced for immediate installation._

_**This is a mandatory exercise for all forces** , regardless of current assigned task. We are aiming for 1 000 000 installations per day, which is less than one from each recruit. We anticipate that this task will become more difficult as the more stubborn humans go into hiding, and when this occurs a task force will be assigned from the second wave of our colonization force._  
 **Required equipment:** Installer, identification chips, standard defence kit.  
 **Expected timeline:** Less than 20 full planetary cycles.  
 **Projected resistance:** Little to none.

Phase One: Information

She bets they will get caught in the first city. Darcy does not deserve this shit.

***

In the 'where will you be in ten years' essay she wrote when she was twelve Darcy hadn't put down 'hiding in a church basement like a modern day, extremely smelly, absolutely terrified Anne Frank'. She might be a little psychic, but she'd been blindsided by it all. Nostradamus hadn't managed to predict this particular disaster. Hell, the Mayans had expected that the world would end _last_ year, which proves that even they couldn't count all that well.

Actually, she'd written 'married to Justin Timberlake', so apparently she wasn't a little bit psychic. It would be a disappointment if Darcy weren't so busy hyperventilating. 

It's not that the basement's terrible. It's not, strictly speaking, even a basement. The old church house outside Philadelphia has an awesome secret passageway, leading to a tiny room that's just off the real basement. Darcy's biggest disappointment was that it wasn't opened by a book in the library; Jane's was that there wasn't a library. For a space so small it's surprisingly comfortable, with wall to wall mattresses, scheduled bathroom breaks and flashlights that make the best props for ghost stories.

"We can't just stand by and watch," the minister's wife had told them when she had heard them talk about finding a home base. She was rubbing her own arm where a soft pulse of light beat in time with her heart just under her skin, blushing red and refusing to meet their eyes. Darcy promised herself that she'd raise havoc in the woman's name when they worked out something resembling a plan. 

Dr. Banner isn't doing so well in the small space. They'd been given the household's meagre supply of books. He had paged through them frantically, finishing the last of them by the third day. Natasha, sick of frightening everyone by continually polishing her weapons had tried to distract him with tales of her spy days. It turns out some of them were pretty funny, although Natasha's line between creepy and amusing is nowhere near Darcy's comfort zone.

Poker, Darcy also finds out, is not a game you want to play with someone who gets angry when she cheats.

"Well we're not playing truth or dare," Darcy says moodily. The green has receded from Bruce's eyes, which is apparently a good sign. She's smart enough not to test it. She's still holding on to her winning hand, gracefully supplied by Jane, whose ability to count cards is truly a beautiful thing to watch. She tosses them on the ground, mourning the four aces she knows will never come her way again. "That's useless without booze."

"We could converse," Thor suggests hopefully. He has been on the receiving end of various levels of silent treatment for three solid days. Natasha winks at Darcy and, in one graceful leap, crosses the room to where Jane's sitting and finds an immediate need to create an intricate piece of hair art.

"Braids or twists?" She asks, pulling a mirror out of her utility belt and angling it in front of Jane's face. Jane purses her lips at the shiny thing; she only barely gives a longing glance at Thor. Darcy is wholeheartedly glad they inducted Natasha into the Sisterhood. She's been going above and beyond the call of duty.

"Yes, let's talk," Darcy says, huffing at him. "Let's talk about long distance relationships, and how they take work. Let's especially talk about how when you're in the same city, or in your case _on the same planet_ as your long distance sweetie, it's only polite to pop in, say hi, maybe have some hanky panky sex?"

"Darcy!" Jane scolds her. Darcy can't see the blush in the low light, but she's fairly sure it's there, staining Jane's cheeks bright pink.

"He was busy," Bruce offers, methodically picking up the cards and sorting them into suit order. "Alien invasion, evil brother…"

"He wasn't well," Thor sighs, but he doesn't push it. 

"Funny," Darcy says, pursing her lips. She's kept her phone on airplane mode, trying her hardest to conserve batteries as long as possible, but this is worth the loss of her beloved playlist. She flicks to a video she downloaded, then carefully and methodically blocked in every internet add-on she could find. It shows five men and one woman, sitting quietly around a table and slowly bringing food to their mouths. "You had time for a dinner date."

"That was Tony," Bruce interrupts again. Darcy levels him with her best scowl, holding her sore palm up to quiet him. 

"While I have no doubt the Iron Butthole was involved," Darcy agrees bigheartedly. "That's not the point. The point is, you could have called, or sent a damn postcard, you know?"

"I didn't intend to cause Jane more pain," Thor says. He leans against the wall, looking strange and somehow smaller in his jeans and t-shirt, legs crossed tightly. "I didn't…I had a task left to undertake. I knew if I saw her, I would be less inclined to leaving."

Jane smiles, big and goofy. It's embarrassing watching other people's crushes, but even Darcy has to admit that's a good answer. When Thor holds his arm out to Jane, she grabs hold of his hand, curling up against his side and hooking it around her shoulder. She's so small; Darcy makes a face when she gets a mental image of just how squashed her boss will end up if they end up sleeping together. 

"I'm sorry, Jane," he says softly. Jane melts like the gigantic tubs of ice cream she consumed in the weeks after he left again. "I know we spent little time together, but I've long wanted to remedy that."

"We have time now," Jane whispers. The three onlookers turn their heads while Jane and Thor kiss. It's sort of sweet, really, until Darcy looks back and sees tongues getting involved.

"Ew! Oh my God, guys, company!" She calls out. They're not dissuaded, and Darcy sends a special, fervent prayer to Thor the Thunder God that public sex isn't a _thing_ in Asgard. Thor starts, jerking away as though he has been electrocuted. It makes Darcy's mind wander, contemplating whether thunder gods can get electrocuted at all. 

"What's wrong?" Jane asks, cupping her hands over his cheeks, turning him to look at her. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, yes," Thor waves it off, pressing a kiss to Jane's forehead. "I thought I felt…it's been a long time. Never mind, Jane, I am perfectly well."

Darcy's eyes widen, and she reaches for the same zealotry she felt thirty seconds ago and tries again, praying for a gigantic ice cream cone, a new puppy, sunlight and, if at all possible, to wake up and find that the aliens have all buggered off to whatever strange galaxy they came from. Thor jumps again. Darcy is so happy that she clutches her hands to her heart, feeling it beat frantically under her rib cage.

"Holy hell," she whispers. It's an entirely inappropriate word under a church, but she's here with a _Norse God_ who has somehow managed to hear her prayers. Natasha scoots over to her, all hands and freakishly limber legs. Bruce's eyes tinge a little green until he realises that Darcy is not dying, she's just massively excited. "Sorry, sorry. Just…praying."

Natasha gets it immediately, and Bruce doesn't take long to follow. Natasha's eyes light with the same joy that Tony's had when he considered pranking an entire race while Bruce starts fiddling with his shirt, the sign Darcy's coming to recognise as his version of Jane's pen tapping. It would be so much easier if they just came with 'Scientist at Work' light up signs, but Darcy'll make do with what she has. 

Raising her hands and pressing them together in the universal sign of talking to the big(ger) guy, she closes her eyes and smiles softly. Thor jumps almost a foot in the air, and Jane squeaks, ducking out of the way to avoid being squished on his way back down.

"What…" Thor starts. Then his eyes narrow and he looks at the three people staring at him in fascination. "It has been many years since I have been prayed to with such…belief."

"So you can feel prayers?" Bruce prompts, and Darcy giggles. Natasha pokes her, but she's biting her lip so Darcy knows that her mind is just as deep in the gutter as Darcy's own.

"Yes," Thor says. He looks a little constipated; Darcy resolves to teach him all the universal earth symbols of _go fuck yourself_ so he learns an appropriate and less hammery way to express his displeasure with Darcy's perfectly justifiable actions. "It is much stronger when I am close, of course, and requires a true force of belief that many Midgardians can no longer summon, but all Æsir have the ability to hear when they are truly needed. Some, the truly talented, are able to have conversations without ever speaking a word."

"So it's essentially a form of telepathy?" Bruce asks, and then they have to explain to Thor exactly what that means.

"I suppose that's closest description of it, yes," Thor purses his lips as he thinks. "My Mother would be able to explain more; she is the most gifted practitioner I have yet encountered."

"Fascinating," Bruce says. Darcy suspects that, if they're stuck in here much longer, scientific journals all over the planet will be blowing up with proof of telepathy and the psychic arts. Maybe Darcy really is among that number, because when the door opens at their standard dinner time the minister's wife has been replaced with gigantic, naked, purple and orange aliens.

Darcy will never admit to screaming, but someone sure as hell did, and she doesn't see anyone else's mouth move. Natasha grabs her by the shoulders, forcing her to her knees and shielding Darcy's body with her own. Darcy's breath catches in her throat. She starts to choke, her hands pressed tightly to her throat, trying to dislodge the saliva from the outside. 

Natasha crouches down beside her. Darcy prays, really this time, that S.H.I.E.L.D agents know the Heimlich manoeuvre. Thor twitches. Darcy wants it so badly to be funny again, wants to stop hyperventilating, and for Jane's terrified tears to go away. One of the aliens, tall, gangly, and even more brightly coloured than on television, matches Natasha's movements, ducking down next to Darcy. Darcy has to let go of her throat and half tackle Natasha to stop her pulling out one of the hidden weapons. 

Doing that makes it even harder to breathe. She's almost glad when one of the aliens holds a strange device up to her mouth. It's like that weird euthanasia booth thingy on Futurama, except this time she's not listing all the embarrassing moments in her life that would have sent her running for it. The metal and crystal contraption glows a little, then light flashes over her face and her throat eases, her breath coming back to her.

"Better?" The alien asks. It's almost soothing. It's (his? Her?) accent is strange, and it's having a lot of trouble pronouncing the words properly. It's such a strange contrast to the ones who'd made the announcements that Darcy is almost poking it in the throat before she realises that, apparently lifesaving powers notwithstanding, she really doesn't want to be touched by the thing.

"What is this?" Another asks. Jane chokes a little when they notice he's pointing at Mjolnir.

"Just a statue," Natasha says coolly, helping Darcy slowly to her feet. Darcy takes an experimental deep breath; it's all fine, just fine, she doesn't even need the normal drink of water she does after choking, and _how the hell did they just do that_? "Been here for ages, apparently. None of us can lift it."

Thor looks rebellious, but he subsides when Jane wraps her arms around his waist. They barely fit, she's so very small. Thor stills like he's been put in a vice. He's tense as one of the aliens puts his hand over it, gives an experimental tug. It doesn't move, like any of them expected it to. (Darcy's drunken antics the other night notwithstanding. She could have been worthy, and how would the God of Uncommunication know anyway?)

"Interesting," the alien murmurs.

"Not really!" Darcy says a little hysterical. The minister's wife has been hovering, miserably, in the door, and even she's finding the energy to look at Darcy as though she's just gone bat-crap crazy. "I have one just like it. I mean…not just like it, mine's less like a hammer and more like a cat, but it still needed a truck to bring it to my house, then my father gave himself a hernia trying to lift it while he was high…"

Darcy's given a lot of impromptu speeches in her life. They've ranged from brilliant (The Importance of Alternative Music in Popular Culture) to abysmal (The Downfall of Mycenae, As Told Through Artefacts). This is her worst effort ever. She's going to have to give up procrastination, caffeine and all-nighters as her study strategy, she's lost the touch.

"Ah, yes, cats," the alien says. Darcy can't believe that's the bit that's being focused on. "You allowed them to either starve or be executed in factories for entertainment."

"That's not…quite how animal shelters work," Jane says, and Darcy's figures she has a right to be offended. Most of the astronomical fee she got for the random symposium S.H.I.E.L.D had set up went to _preserve_ the Puente Antiguo animal shelter. Darcy's beginning to wonder why she bothered.

"If you insist," the alien says. Darcy really doesn't like this one. She'd consider adopting the lifesaving one, it's kind of cute, but the one that's holding a big stick like thing and insulting her is being added to her shit list. 

"Well, now that we're all square," Natasha says, and the aliens look down at themselves curiously. "We'll be leaving."

"Do you have somewhere to go?" The nice alien asks, patting Darcy affectionately on the head. She ducks away so quickly that she rebounds off Natasha and onto Bruce, who is, Darcy notices, is a disturbing mix of peach and green that looks far too much like her stomach contents the last time she ate gas station sushi.

"Uh, sure, sure," Darcy bluffs, grabbing a hold of Bruce's coat and holding her breath. "Places to go, people to see, you know…"

"Then why are you staying here?" Bad alien asks. Darcy makes a face at him and does her best to not pray, wish or do anything that might cause Thor to make a sudden, angry movement. 

"It's very comfortable," Natasha says. She's noticed Bruce too. Her face is sickly white, a hideous contrast to her black clothes.

"No, you'll come with us," nice alien says, taking Darcy by the hand. Darcy fights against it, but his grip is so strong that her arm aches with effort before her fingers shift at all. She doesn't want to leave this place that's felt a little like a sanctuary, or to make Thor leave Mjolnir, but the stick thingy the bad alien is carrying has started to glow an ominous red, and she doesn't want to be blown up either. "Come. We have a place for you."

***

The _place_ turns out to be a gorgeous suite in one of the hotels downtown. Their floor mates seem to primarily consist of what Darcy recognises as the homeless man she'd donated her sandwich to on the way into town and a bunch of his friends that seem entirely flummoxed on what to do with clean clothes, large amounts of food and huge screen televisions.

Darcy knows exactly what to do with them all, she's just too grumpy to do it. It's easier to sulk, rubbing her newly implanted arm in unhappiness. Even Thor now has a forearm pulsing with white light, something he appears to be finding a personal affront. Things almost got a little Hulky during installation; thankfully it turns out that having Darcy's breasts shoved in your face and Natasha's legs wrapped around your waist is so very distracting that Bruce forgot to be angry. 

It's not much comfort when looking down at his arm makes him mad all over again.

"Now what?" Jane asks from her perch on Thor's lap. She's wrapped one of the large, fluffy bathrobes over her dirty jeans and appears to be taking great joy in doing her best to entirely trash the room and all the little luxuries they have been given with it. 

"Stick with the original plan," Natasha says shortly, fiddling with one of her zippers. It's the most undone Darcy has ever seen her. It should make her scared, but there's just no more room inside her for more fear. She picks angry instead, because in the large range of Darcy Lewis emotions, it tends to be the one that ends with the most destruction. "Wait until nightfall. Break into buildings that have the largest populations of Bysrah until we find something useful."

"Which is going to be pointless if they _know where we are_ ," Darcy stresses. One of the few things she brought with her was a first aid kit. Turns out that was a brilliant move, because all the alien medical supplies are confusing as heck, and Darcy's given up on trying to decipher them. She figures, if things get terrible, it might be the best project to keep Bruce calm and sciencey rather than loud and green. 

Jane looks at her, the _I know what you're doing here, version 7: this could actually be dangerous_ one. Darcy grins and holds up the sewing kit that is not dangerous enough to be removed from the room, nor useful enough to be confiscated by the Bysrah. 

"Remember when I got that chair from the thrift store?" Darcy asks Jane. Her smile is huge; it feels a little manic on her face, but damnit, she has a plan and that's better than where she was a minute ago. "And you said I had to refinish it before you'd allow it into the lab? So I got all that sandpaper, and ended up with more splinters than smooth chair? This isn't much bigger than a splinter."

"Oh, god, Darcy, no," Jane whispers. Darcy has already extracted the tweezers from the first aid kit and the needle from the sewing one. She should probably disinfect it with the contents of the mini-bar, but she doesn't want to lose her nerve before she goes through with it. "Darcy, don't!"

Darcy sticks the needle into her skin with relish. Jane squeaks, clapping her hands over her mouth. Natasha jumps for Darcy, but Darcy's had a lot of practice getting tiny shards of foreign material out, and she's grabbed a hold of the end of it before her hands can be slapped away and pulled it out of her arm.

"And that," Darcy says triumphantly. "Is how you do that."

"That is how you get _an infection_ ," Natasha hisses. She's got one of the mini bottles of vodka in her hands, a beautiful piece of artistry that Darcy reaches for gleefully. She pouts when it's pulled away, cracked open and poured over her skin.

"What a waste," she sighs holding obediently on to the tissue Natasha presses on top of it. A small spot of blood appears under her fingers, but there's surprisingly little bleeding for what Darcy assumed would be a much bigger wound. When she lifts the tissue to look under it the skin is almost healed, the blood leakage already stopped. "Hey, cool."

Bruce slips the tracking chip out of her hand. The wildly flashing light had started as soon as it was parted from Darcy's flesh; it calms down again in Bruce's fingers, and he smiles. 

"Now that's interesting," he says.

"We could pay someone else to hold it for us," Natasha says, musingly. She's in spy mode, an expression Darcy can only differentiate from her usual one by the chill she feels running down her spine. "We have no confirmation they're using it to track us, but if they are Darcy's right; we'll need to get rid of them."

"I had a hard enough time letting it get put in," Bruce says, rubbing his hand over his shirt-sleeve. "I don't think I'd do well having it taken back out."

"That might be for the best," Thor says. He's got a tube of conditioner in his hand, and he seems to be contemplating rubbing it on his beard. It makes it hard for Darcy to take the rest of what he says seriously. "If they believe we are still being tracked, and can confirm it by laying eyes on you, then they are more likely to believe that we, too, are where we're meant to be."

"I'm slightly disturbed that he's shaping up to be the smart one," Natasha mumbles. Darcy mouths _I know, right_ and they share a grin at the total unfairness that Jane's been able to land a Norse God who isn't as thick as a brick. 

"My brother is cleverer," Thor says. Darcy feels unaccountably like she's kicked a puppy, so she reaches into her backpack and pulls out Mr. Muggles. Thor takes him wordlessly, and Darcy looks away so she can pretend that she isn't seeing tall, pale and tanked flop down on the king-size bed and curl himself around Darcy's spirit animal. 

Well, she mostly looks away. The pictures she takes with her now fully charged, if not functioning, phone are totally not for blackmail purposes. 

Darkness comes slowly. Maybe that's just the result of seeing the third rerun of the Brady Bunch, apparently the only show being broadcast, on a constant loop. Darcy never thought she'd see the day when the Brady Bunch had to be cut down for content. She feels cruelly pleased when she thinks of their censorship jerks getting to A Serbian Film. Googling the synopsis of that is currently number one on her Worst Ideas Ever list, an honour she'd never thought could be taken from Two Girls, One Cup.

"I still don't see why I couldn't wear my red hat," Darcy complains, tugging on the edges of the plain black beanie she'd been forced into. "It's not like we're not obvious enough as it is."

"We're not obvious," Natasha repeats, because she's apparently unable to see why four people walking down a street dressed like ninjas is at all suspicious. Darcy had campaigned hard for the pimp and the prostitutes costumes, but no, they have to go all cliché and wear black everything. Even Darcy's socks are black, which is making her feel like she's thirteen and going through her goth stage all over again.

"Shh…" Thor whispers. He's been making them stop every block so that he can scout ahead and make sure that no one's coming for them. Darcy's not entirely sure how he could tell, what with whole bunch of identical naked aliens swarming between buildings, but he's probably fairly used to staring at intergalactic junk. This might just be a normal Wednesday to him. "Be silent."

Darcy starts breathing louder, just for the sake of it. The aliens that pay attention to them don't seem to care much what they do as long as they're not doing it to them. Hell, Darcy had taken a whizz on a fire hydrant just to see what would happen, and they hadn't so much as blinked an eyelid, because that's just okay now. Darcy's surprisingly okay with that law. It will make getting home after a night at the bar so much more comfortable.

As long as she doesn't bring Natasha, anyway. The woman has killer aim when she wants to punch someone.

"You, wait!" One of the aliens says, looking at Darcy. Darcy tenses, gets ready to run, before she remembers just how out of shape she is. She also remembers how badly it worked when Officer Jones chased after her in Senior Year, and she ended up having to pay a ridiculously large fine for public urination.

Even thinking that makes it sound like a thing with her. Maybe she should work on the whole tiny bladder issue.

"Yes?" She asks defiantly instead, tugging on her boring beany.

"You must wait," the alien repeats, grabbing for her arm. "You must have this installed."

He pulls her shirtsleeve up. Darcy's not sure what a frown looks like with these guys, but he waves his arms up and down alarmingly, and that makes up her mind for her. As soon as she's free of these dudes, she's getting that gym membership and taking the Zombieland fitness course. It'll be even more effective when she has to give up food to pay for it.

"You have had a tracker?" He asks, clicking his tongue against his teeth.

"It fell out," Darcy says sullenly, raising herself up to her full height. It's a lot more impressive when seen beside Jane and Natasha, the scarily tiny things they are. 

"Fell out?" The alien repeats, like he's never heard of anything falling before.

"She hit me!" Darcy blurts out. It's not really a lie.

"And it fell out?" The alien says.

"Yes. She hit me. And it fell out." Darcy doesn't see how the order of those events is all that relevant.

"I shall put it back in for you," the alien says kindly, as though it's some gigantic favour he's doing her. Darcy winces as the needle slides into already bruised flesh and underneath it the light begins to blink again.

She waits until the alien waddles off cheerfully before slipping her hand in her pocket, and until they have settled on a target for the night before enacting her plan.

"You really should let me stop the bleeding," Jane says, the black headscarf she had wrapped dramatically around her head now pushed against Darcy's arm.

"I can't believe you brought the sewing kit," Natasha sighs from where she is crouched down beside a building.

"I can't believe you didn't let me take yours out," Darcy grumbles. "What's the point in being a trailblazer if no one follows you?"

"If I was going to follow someone into insanity it would have been Loki," Natasha tells her sternly, peeking over the edge of the window. The building looks abandoned, but there have been aliens in and out of in all night, and they always seemed to be carrying something. Odds have been declared good that this was some sort of storage area, and now they're all lurking around like her senior prom date waiting for an opportunity to get into the building's pants. "At least he had an army."

"I'm so expelling you from the Sisterhood," Darcy says. Natasha looks a little hurt, and Darcy throws her arms around her, dislodging Jane with a faint squeal. "Don't worry. I'd never do that. We love you. And you haven't betrayed us terribly with the guy who dumped you from another planet."

"The coast is clear," Thor says a little too loudly. He's doing surprisingly well on earth idioms, especially since Jane convinced him not to believe Darcy's definition of any of them. "We should go in now, before we're spotted."

They follow Thor quietly. Darcy does her best not to let the terror settling in her belly spread to the rest of her, but it's a near thing. She wasn't built for actual espionage. She's great at talking loudly and pointing out when everyone else is about to make a really big mistake, but the act of putting one foot in front of another while sneaking into a building she's not meant to be in is the hardest thing she's ever done.

It used to be a restaurant. The tables and chairs remain in place, stacked with clear, glass-like boxes that all appear to be filled with glowing crystals. Darcy kneels down in front of one of them, pressing her fingers against the glass. It gives under her touch and she jerks herself away, rubbing her fingers together. They're covered with a strange gel, cool on her skin. The box is repairing itself, the smudges she has left rapidly fading.

"No way," she whispers. She pulls out her phone and takes a picture of it. It looks like one of those abstract, shiny desktop wallpapers that Jane had insisted on putting on all the computers in the lab. Darcy had tried to emulate them for her photography elective, but she closest she could find in Puente Antiguo was a broken microwave that gave off sparks and some glow sticks she had left over from last New Year's Eve. 

"What do you think it is?" Jane asks, kneeling down beside her. She touches her own hand to the box, making a face as it shifts and splits. She has more courage than Darcy; when her hand pushes fully through she grabs a hold of two of the crystals and pulls them out, examining them carefully.

"Tracking crystals?" Darcy guesses.

"Too big," Natasha says shortly, liberating the crystals from Jane and tucking them in a pocket Darcy hadn't realised existed. "It doesn't matter. Grab a few from as many boxes as you can, and get out."

Darcy huffs in indignation, but she follows Natasha's advice. The gel is surprisingly easy to get used to when she knows what it does. It doesn't look poisonous - not that she wants to take the chance - so she wipes it off on her jacket each time she frees herself from the boxes. She doesn't quite have Natasha's stash of magical pockets, but she was the only one smart enough to bring a bag, so, with her typical luck, Darcy gets stuck being the creepy crystal pack mule.

"This isn't going to turn me into some sort of pod person is it?" Darcy asks. She holds one of the crystals, a pale, cool lilac, up to her forehead with a mischievous grin. Her skin tingles and the crystal starts to glow. Darcy yelps, dropping whatever the freaky mind-stealing thing is on to her shoes. She kicks out at it, but Thor has already grabbed at her, lifting her off the floor and away from the bright purple light. "Oh my God, oh my God, it is, isn't it? That's what's happening? Oh hell. Do I look like I've been possessed? Are my eyes changing colour?"

She grabs for the collar of Thor's shirt, concentrating on how weird it is to see him in something that isn't armour. He _suits_ the armour, looks like he should be wearing it even when he isn't.

"Get it out of me," she hisses. Jane, the traitor, has completely forgotten that she's meant to love Darcy dearly and is poking at the crystal with her keys. Since Darcy is, hovering two feet over the floor, unable to kick the thing terrifying away from her, she aims her foot at her boss.

"This is _interesting_ ," Jane says, glaring at Darcy. "Also you're fired."

"No I'm not," Darcy sulks. "You'd have to train a whole new assistant, and I doubt that anyone else would rescue you from the terrifying balloon animals you keep finding everywhere."

"You put them there!" Jane goes back to her poking. "At least I'm not afraid of _cows_."

"Neither am I," Darcy retorts, puzzled. She's fairly confident that she's not going to turn into some Village of the Damned host to an evil blonde spawn. She's so relieved that she almost misses the crash and roar that comes from the back of the building.

"Run," Natasha says, paler than Darcy has ever seen her. It's bizarre that Darcy can even see it in the dim light of the scary crystals. That more than anything is what makes her decide that clowns, flesh eating bacteria and amusement park accidents be damned, the Hulk is the scariest thing she's ever seen.

Even if his big brown eyes are all adorable scientist, and make Darcy want to just pinch those huge green cheeks.

And that thing she said? About Thor being all clued in? Total nonsense, because the surfer boy rip-off actually goes up to the green rage monster, hands held out in front of him, and tries to _reason with him_. He totally deserves that backhand into the wall, Jane crying out in horror, and the box of dimly lit crystals flying after him.

The weird-ass metal statue might have been a bit of overkill, but hey. Darcy wasn't about to tell anyone what they could do when they were in the middle of a temper tantrum.

"We have to go," Natasha whispers, her voice so hoarse that Darcy can barely hear her. Darcy's not the hero type, she knows that now. She doesn't know how to be strong when all her idols are falling apart, but she wraps her arms around Natasha and drags her outside, pushing her down behind an abandoned car.

"It's all right," Darcy whispers. She strokes Natasha's back cautiously, trying to time it with the red-head's deep, laboured breathing. "Just stay here, okay? I have to…I have to go get Jane, you know what she's like, she's probably trying to get blood samples or something…"

Each step she takes makes Darcy's feet feel more leaden. She wants more than anything to crawl under the car, where Natasha has taken refuge, and wait until the world makes sense again. She forces herself to walk, to cower behind the open door and, finally, when she's sure that there's not a chilling troll lurking behind it, waiting to eat her, she makes herself walk back into the room that she knows will be the star of her next few nightmares.

She's not far off. Jane isn't trying to get blood samples, but she is lurking dangerously close to not-Bruce. Whenever he gets close enough she tries to pluck short black hairs from his oversized head. Darcy lunges for her, barely scraping her arm, and catches on to her fingers. When she's sure she has a grip she tugs on Jane's hand, pulling her away from the Hulk, who has just noticed her presence.

"No!" Darcy says when Jane makes to pull away from her. She's caught Hulk's attention and she whimpers, then starts to babble, so afraid she's starting to lose feeling in her extremities. She vows that when this is all over, she's giving into her grandfather's advice and becoming an accountant. "No, not you, sorry, I was talking to Jane, you can do whatever you like, I swear!"

The Hulk leans forward, his breath hot and sour against Darcy's face. To her astonishment, and there's not a small amount of relief in there too, he laughs at her, a mean sound that rankles her deep in the places that were tormented mercilessly in grade school.

"Scared girl," he sniffs, pounding his fist down on the box of crystals by her head. Darcy shrieks. Thor, who Darcy had been willing to write off as dead at this point, dives on top of them, covering both Jane and Darcy with his own body. Darcy peeks out from under his chest - tanked or not, the man is going on a diet - and sees that this is, thank Thor, Odin, whatever their mother's name was, and even the damned trickster god, apparently the best thing Hulk has ever seen.

The boxes around them are turned into tiny bits of glass and crystal dust, the light fading in the small shards. They tinkle, almost like music, when they land on the cement floor. Darcy closes her eyes, and without being able to see it she can make herself believe that she's just been hauled along to another one of her sophomore roommate's experimental interpretive dance recitals.

"Come on," Darcy says, thin and thready. "He's distracted. We should…we should go. Natasha's outside, and she's scared…"

"Be still, Darcy," Thor whispers. He pulls himself off them, retaining his grip around Jane's tiny waist. How the woman doesn't break when Thor lifts her Darcy will never understand. "Doctor Banner will not hurt you."

"He hurt you," Jane says. Darcy knows this voice; it means that a long, looong lecture on personal responsibility is coming. The great oaf deserves it; he shouldn't be allowed to scare them like this. Darcy desperately needs to stop caring about people she's just met. They're all turning out to be superheros lately, and Darcy's adolescent comic book addiction has told her exactly what sort of fates await them.

"I am stronger than that," Thor reassures her. Darcy proves his point by kicking him; it may have hurt her foot more than it did his steel-strong shin, but she's wordless with outrage and physical violence appears to be the only way she can express herself.

"Well _I'm not_ ," she growls, taking a hold of Jane's ear. Jane yelps in pain, but Darcy has _had enough of this shit_ and she refuses to let go until she has gotten them both to safety outside. The fresh air is beautiful, bringing a relief to her burning lungs. She turns to Jane, more than a little hysterical, and her bosses' image blurs in front of her. Darcy hadn't realised she was crying until she's wiping the tears away with her sore arm. "Is this what you want? Really?"

"What do you mean?" Jane asks. She looks like she's about to go straight back in after Thor, so Darcy shoves her, keeps shoving her until they're three blocks away and Jane's tiny scientist lungs wouldn't be able to make it back before Darcy caught up with her. 

"This!" Darcy says shrilly. "Is this really what you want your life to be? Always waiting for him to get _slammed into a brick wall_ by the newest arsehole that wants him dead?"

"I…" Jane is lost for words. It's so rare that Darcy wants to laugh, but none of this is funny, none of it is amusing at all, and this can't be her life. It just can't be. "I never thought…I mean…"

"Well think," Darcy says. She hadn't thought Natasha would be able to move, but the woman is there beside them in that creepy appearing out of nowhere way she has, her head resting on Darcy's shoulder while she shakes. "Because this is it. This is how it'll always be."

"But I…" Jane looks back at the crystal repository, her bottom lip trembling. "I just…I've been waiting."

"Is that enough?" Natasha asks. Her eyes have lost some of the mind-numbing terror, though she's still trembling. Darcy is having a hard time keeping herself upright. She gives up on fighting, picking the nearest building and slumping down against it. Natasha won't take her eyes off Jane, and there it goes, now there's two of them crying. "Darcy's right. This is how our lives go, Jane. Can you live with that?"

"I don't know," Jane whispers, worrying on her lower lip. "I just…it's all happening so fast, and I wanted…"

"You met a guy, he moved _half way across the galaxy_ , and now you're stuck thinking he's the one who got away," Darcy says, so far from tact that she's fairly sure it's moved to Asgard. She mentally waves goodbye to it, thanking it for all the good times they'd had. Then she snorts to herself, because face it; tact and Darcy had had a one night stand or two, and then she'd gotten herself into a long-term relationship with snark and never really fell out of love.

"I don't know," Jane says, defeated. "I just wanted a chance."

"Well, you have it," Natasha says. It doesn't sound as comforting as Darcy thinks it should. "Think about it, Jane. Thor is…he has other things to think about, he doesn't need the distraction of-"

"Oh my God," Darcy shrieks. There are aliens all around them, and she's alerted all of them to her presence, but really? "You're giving her _the talk_ "

Natasha glares at her, which is all right because it's a great distraction. Darcy even allows an alien to install another tracker in her forearm, making a big deal of screaming, crying, and pretending to faint so that Thor will have a few extra seconds to get Hulk the hell out of there. He may be big, green and scary, but he's _their_ big, green and scary, and he at least has the decency to choose one damned colour rather than clashing spots everywhere.

The aliens have a medicine wipe thing. It looks exactly like the wet wipes she gets with her fried chicken meals. When it's rubbed lightly over her arm it tingles, like the crystal against her forehead, and the abused skin knots itself back together without leaving a scar.

"All hail our alien overlords," Darcy mutters to herself. She receives twin glares from Jane and Natasha; holding her arm up for them to see, she runs her thumb over the light blinking under her skin. "What? It's more relevant than giving the talk in the middle of a Hulk frenzy."

"Actually, that's a pretty good time," Jane says, and she shrugs when Darcy levels a raised eyebrow at her. "Just considering our likelihood of getting out of it alive. It could be the only chance."

"She has a point," Natasha admits. Darcy throws her hands up in the air. She loves bizarre conversations, she really does, but this has gone so far past the line of too much that she sees the lightspeed lines in the distance.

"I want to go home," Darcy whispers. Jane's face softens, and she holds her arms out. Darcy doesn't care that she's too old for this, that five minutes ago she was designated the strong one, that they still don't know where Thor and Hulk are; she hauls herself up, buries her head against Jane's shirt, and bawls like the baby she really is.

***

"I'm sorry about last night," Bruce says. His eyes are huge and brown. They look exactly like Bark Simpson's, the gorgeous elderly chocolate Labrador she had adopted when she was ten and had loved passionately. It doesn't make Darcy inclined to forgiveness, but she feels more guilty for holding a grudge.

"It wasn't your fault," Jane says. She has a bruise on her arm, gained sometime in the chaos last night. Bruce blushes when he sees it, his eyes averted. Darcy pats his arm despite herself. "I get pretty scary once a month."

"I've heard that one before," Bruce says, but he's smiling so everything must be all right now. Darcy's fairly sure that nothing is even close to all right, she's been saying so on and off since last night; even her nightmares had featured green, orange and purple amorphous creatures that were stealing her body bit by bit. 

She curls up tighter on the bed, grabbing hold of her knees and wrapping her arms around them. Her head is resting in Natasha's lap. The older woman seemingly believes that running her fingers through Darcy's knotted hair, fingers catching on every snag, is relaxing. It almost is; the pain distracts her from her fear enough that she can keep breathing, but it's a close thing.

There's a small packet on the bedside table. The nice alien, the one Darcy's fairly sure she wants to adopt, dropped them off when he heard about the 'upset with the tracker', and had detected some sort of anomaly in Darcy's blood pressure. She's done her best not to reach for it, to reject anything and everything the invaders stand for, but eventually she can't stand it anymore and when Natasha, Bruce and Jane are engaged in another round of obligatory apologies, she reaches out for it, tearing it open with her teeth.

There are a dozen tiny sheets inside, more wet wipes. She examines one, turning it over in puzzlement. Rubbing it over her skin produces no effect. In the absence of any other idea she licks it curiously; it tastes like nothing, but apparently it's the food of the Gods, because ten seconds later her fear fades almost entirely. She licks it again, seats it on her tongue and feels it dissolve there.  
¬  
"I love you, Bruce," Darcy says. She holds her arms out until he hugs her, face furrowed in confusion. Darcy favours him with her brightest smile, wide and happy. "And if you're in there, thank you for not squashing me, Hulky. I like not being squashed. And thank you for smashing the crystals; I really didn't like those things."

"Are…are you all right, Darce?" Jane asks, kneeling beside the bed and cupping Darcy's face in her hands.

"Brilliant," Darcy says, giddy with pleasure at not being so damned terrified. "Just perfect. I love you too, Jane, and Natasha is awesome, and where's Thor? Because he should know that I don't hate him anymore."

Natasha spies the packet on the table, and tucks it in her pocket. Darcy pouts, because yes, she probably sounds like she's drugged. She's just so relieved that she's not afraid that she's letting herself prattle on about all the things she's been letting curdle in her stomach, positive that she'd never be happy enough to express them.

"He's trying to figure out the crystals," Bruce says, readjusting his shirt. He needs to reconsider the fabric he uses. There's no way Darcy's hug should have rumpled the cloth quite that much. "They have something similar on Asgard. Not crystals, but…you know what; he can probably explain it better. He thinks he can make sense of them, which could be…"

"Invaluable," Natasha finishes, a little smile curling over her lips. "Do you still have…"

"Yeah," Bruce says, patting his pocket. Jane and Darcy look at each other, then cross their arms over their chests in identical motions, with perfectly coordinated pouts. All the time spent practicing that move in front of the mirror has totally paid off. Bruce looks a little intimidated, though Natasha only laughs a little. 

"Have?" Darcy asks, wondering if she could stick her hands down his pants without him going all Hulk-like. 

"Just a way to contact the others," Natasha says, patting Darcy's head awkwardly. "We had no idea how traceable they are, so we thought it best that we only give them to the people who have a way to defend themselves."

"I have a way to defend myself," Darcy says, smiling at the thought of her beloved taser. She ignores the way Bruce looks away from her, and Natasha's far more obvious snort. Thor hadn't thought she was much of a threat either, and she'd sent him ass over tits into the dirt. She could wait. She could bide her time, she could plan revenge…

"Bruce is right," Thor says, and Darcy reluctantly hauls herself off the bed, giving him an awkward hug/pat combo that came right from the Jane Foster school of How to Handle People I Don't Know.

"I've been spending too much time with you," she tells Jane. Jane rolls her eyes, but it's in the affectionate way that means more _you're hopeless but I love you anyway_ , as opposed to _you're an idiot, and if you don't get out of my presence now I'm going to use science to blow you up_ or _oh my God, if she drinks any more of that she's going to turn into pure alcohol, WHERE DID I PUT THE VIDEO CAMERA_. "And I don't hate you any more, Thor. I thought you should know that."

Thor smiles. He's distracted by the crystal he's been turning over in his hand. The smile fades quickly back into a frown; Darcy jumps when it glows against his fingertips, turning the skin a bright, sickly blue.

"You've got it?" Natasha guesses. Thor nods his head, frowning harder. Darcy pulls out her phone, fires up instagram and picks the most emo setting she can find. She needs to start up a new twitter, _Depressed Superheroes_ or something, and this, this would totally be the profile picture. Jane slaps her hand, grabbing Darcy's phone when she drops it in the greatest act of coordination Darcy has ever seen from her and sticks it down her shirt.

"That won't stop me," Darcy mouths. She's getting really sick of people taking her happy things.

"Yes, I have it," Thor says obliviously. "It is similar enough to what we have on Asgard; my brother could tell us more, but I am able to understand the basic functions well enough."

"Why don't we ask your brother, then?" Jane asks. Darcy sighs; she's been doing so well lately, but now that they need her gigantic brain to work at full capacity she's apparently regressed to the _I don't care how nuts it looks, SCIENCE!_ mindset that had seen Darcy in the emergency room four separate times before she could train Jane out of it.

"Because he's insane?" Natasha says.

"Because he tried to destroy New York, and isn't likely to want to help us?" Bruce guesses.

"Because he isn't here?" Darcy points out. 

"Oh yeah," Jane says, stretching her legs out. She makes a face, rubbing at her bruised arm absently. "Well, how did Thor get here?"

"Heimdall saw that my help was needed," Thor says unhappily. He rests the crystal gently on the table by Darcy's hand and slides his arm around Jane's waist, dropping his chin to her shoulder. Jane stiffens; Darcy can see her contemplating, considering pulling away, but in the end she stays where she is, giving Darcy a guilty glance. "My father conjured much magic to get me here. It's extremely tiring for him; he is unable to do it often.

"This is an emergency, though," Jane says, turning into Thor's chest with a soft sigh.

"It might just be me," Bruce says, and his breathing is careful. Darcy bites back a moan and smiles reassuringly at him. It's the same smile she gave her high school physics teacher when he suggested trying for the world's biggest fake volcano and was utterly unable to see the problem with leaving a bunch of teenagers in charge of it. "But I'm not sure I want Loki's help. What with the crazy and the killing, and the other guy throwing him around like a big stuffed toy."

They all studiously don't look at Thor, but Darcy still sees his face fall out of the corner of her eye. She hates how much that hangdog expression makes her want to hug him and make all his worries go away. Apparently reminding her of beloved pets is an Avengers habit; if she ever gives in and begs for a job at S.H.I.E.L.D, the first thing she's doing is starting up the 'Manipulating Me is Not Cool, and If You Keep Doing It I Will Tase You: Darcy and You' seminar. 

"I think I can understand some of it," Thor says hesitantly.

"But not enough to be confident of the result?" Natasha asks. 

"Could you even get back to ask him?" Darcy asks, resenting being the sensible one in this conversation. "It seems like the sort of thing we should be sure of. It's only the whole planet after all."

"There may be a way," Thor sighs, sounding defeated. "There is a ritual I can do to contact my father, and if he is capable he will bring me home."

"Would you come back?" Jane asks, voice dripping with scepticism. Darcy beams. She and Natasha hold up both hands, thumbs up in approval. Jane shakes her head at them, keeping her gaze trained on Thor. This might not be the best time to poke the big, scary God, but the two of them need to, as her senile grandmother had once told her, _shit or get off the pot_.

"I would like to," Thor says, running his thumb over Jane's bottom lip. Jane kisses his hand absently. Darcy knows, with utmost certainty, that she's lost her.

"I'm still not sure about this," Bruce says. Natasha is staring off into the distance, eyes blank. Darcy's not sure what that means, but she isn't prepared to try and pull the woman who probably knows a hundred ways to kill her out of a sleep-walking coma. 

"We need information," Jane says. Darcy's seen undergrads cowed by that tone, terrified into putting on safety goggles and into turning away from the path of super villainy. Darcy's been immune to it since Jane last used it to send her on a Starbucks run; the closest Starbucks is nearly 200 miles away from Puente Antiguo, and the multi-hour trip gave Darcy plenty of time to practice her self-hypnosis skills. Bruce just sniffs at her, entirely unimpressed. "We can't go into this _guessing_ , that's ridiculous. The more information we have, the better, and-"

"Do we really trust _Loki_ to tell us the truth?" Bruce asks, adorably sceptical.

" _We_ are scientists," Jane snaps and Darcy groans, grabbing for a pillow and pressing it against her face. Suffocation is not the best ever way to die (Darcy's planning for either the old age thing or the death by incredible sex from either Johnny Depp, Captain America or that hot dude she met at that bar that time), but Jane's science lectures are far more fatal, if you assume that boredom is deadly. 

" _We_ are stuck with half-hearted intel," Natasha says, loudly, over the two of them. "We don't have much to lose here. If Thor shows Loki and he can't help us, then we're back here again. If he does give us something, then we can analyse it properly, like scientists if you absolutely have to, Jane, don't interrupt me, and decide whether or not _we_ believe it."

"Still not happy about this," Bruce mutters, but he stays a tanned sort of olivey-peach, so at least he's not angry. 

"Fury won't be either," Natasha offers. It probably wasn't the best thing to say, because now she's scared the wits out of all of them. Darcy gives her best ingratiating smile, then reaches into Natasha's pants pockets - holy hell those are tight - and fetches the moist towelettes of happy. She offers one to everyone, forcibly inserting her hand into Jane's mouth when she refuses. She gets a bite for her trouble, but everyone looks a bit calmer except for Bruce, who looks just like Mr. Muggles when he's been rubbed in catnip.

"Who's going to tell him?" Bruce asks. Darcy's so glad she wasn't an only child. She has her hand on her nose faster than any of them. Thor loses, which probably isn't the fairest thing ever, what with him having no idea why everyone's nose is now itchy, but hell, at least Fury can't accidentally kill him with all that badassery. 

"I'll make it up to you," Jane whispers when Thor has run out of arguments. Darcy makes a face; she's probably getting a little bitter here, but her sex life isn't even non-existent. It's more like a fantasy book series that's taking twenty volumes to get to the point. She's happy for Jane, or as happy as she can be having spent so many months reassuring her that it's the Norse Jerk, not her, but she'd quite like her own gorgeous god to fall out of the sky.

"We’d best meet with everyone else first," Natasha says, exhaling a deep breath. "Just in case."

Darcy rubs at her arm, at the tracker she hasn't quite had the guts to take out a third time, and smiles. She can't wait to see this explosion.

***

There's no explosion. Fury meets Thor's suggestion with quiet approval, and Darcy begins to rethink her pod person theory. She pokes at his head when he's not looking, but his one visible eye looks fairly normal, if flinty and promising grisly and painful death. She's getting used to that. Sharing a bathroom with Natasha and Bruce requires strict adherence to draconian rules, and Fury finding Darcy poking him is still less frightening than Natasha finding out someone used her special shampoo.

"I'm beginning to think Thor's more than a little bit of a drama queen," Darcy observes. The Puente Antiguo desert hasn't changed much since Thor's last, slightly more impressive departure. A few less dead robot parts, a trail of rubble from the middle of town that no one can be bothered to clean up and a tiny bit more trauma in Coulson's eyes, maybe, but even the runes remain untouched. 

Maybe letting Jane create the whole 'he might not be dead, but just in case…' shrine had been a bad idea. 

"It did look more dramatic last time," Coulson agrees. 

"There should have been explosions. At least a little puff of smoke?" Darcy continues as if Coulson hadn't spoken. "Not just suddenly invisible Thor, you know?"

Natasha and Pepper are flanking Jane, relieving Darcy of crying boss duty. Darcy loves them intensely. As soon as she can get back to their apartment she's making them custom collages on just how awesome they are, enhanced with glitter glue and all the heart-shaped scrapbooking baubles she can find. She'll even consider actually paying for Avengers merchandise, something she's so far boycotted because it tends to have Thor's face on it. Frankly, considering how much she's done for them all, there should be t-shirts with Darcy's face on them.

"Feels more like suddenly invisible Phil," Coulson says. He sounds sad, like there might be real tears involved sometime soon. Darcy sighs, waving a mental goodbye to the silent treatment.

"How'd you survive anyway?" Darcy asks, aiming for bored. Coulson looks at her, surprised. She makes her best funny face, the one she uses to entertain toddlers in the checkout line. Coulson smiles. He's actually kinda cute when he's not being all scary and secret-agent 'I'll kill you in your sleep and you'll thank me'.

"Medical bay, then hospital," Coulson says. That doesn't really answer any of Darcy's questions.

"Why'd they tell us you were dead?" Jane asks. She's a bit of a hypocrite, Darcy's becoming increasingly sure. She'll stay mad at Coulson for one little fake death, and then forgive Thor on the spot for months of not bothering to call. When she puts it like that, Darcy finds herself more than a little on Coulson's side. 

She sidles closer to him, to where Tony and Steve are standing like some sort of guard statue on either side, protecting him from the evils Darcy is still praying won't come. Praying is ridiculous amounts of fun lately. She's been practicing by pleading really hard for a new puppy, an endless supply of iTunes gift cards and for Loki to suddenly grow horns to fit inside that helmet. 

"They thought I would be for a couple of months," Coulson says. No one should be that cheerful about their almost but not really death. Darcy resolves to remember that if she ever becomes a staff writer for one of the daytime soaps, a childhood dream she still pulls out when being assistant to a mad scientist starts to get a little hairy. 

"He nearly was when Natasha found out," Pepper says, the tiniest hint of disapproval in her tone. The woman's a genius. Darcy was entirely uninvolved in the potential murdering and she still wants to go out and buy Coulson an I'm sorry card and a muffin basket.

"He deserved it," Natasha sniffs, patting Jane on the back in a way Darcy assumes she means to be comforting, but really just looks painful.

There is a long pause, where the people left look at either each other or the huge, empty blue sky. Darcy makes a face, taps her boots against the sand and takes petty enjoyment in disrupting the plaster casts of runes, the fake flowers Jane left there after an overly alcoholic Valentine's Day and the decaying poptarts Darcy had dropped when she was feeling particularly determined to avoid another one of Jane's sugar highs. 

"Now what?" Tony asks. 

"Vodka?" Darcy suggests dubiously. It's better than wine, and she's pretty sure that if she reaches for the beer again Fury will shoot her. She hasn't been able to drink tequila since her seventeenth birthday, when she woke up with the rival high school's quarterback and a rug burn on her ass that took almost a month to heal completely.

"I vote a reunion of The Sisterhood of Better Superheroes," Maria grumbles, her face tight and pointedly not looking at Fury.

"Seconded," Pepper mutters, pointedly not looking at Tony.

"Thirded," Jane says, pointedly not looking at the sky, the ground, or anything that might, even just allegedly, have a penis.

"Motion passed," Darcy says with a sigh. She goes to collect her cocktail kit, the test tubes they have repurposed into shot glasses and the buckets she promised the guys at the hardware store were needed for a leaky roof.

She abandons the Sisterhood three hours in. She's been a little too afraid to mix alcohol with the moist towelettes of making things funny, and she's been a lot afraid of the stupid things being addictive. The Sisterhood comes looking for her, because they're awesome and caring that way, but Darcy's got a lot of experience hiding in this desert and drunk people don't often think to look in the trailer she's meant to be in.

"Not with your minions?" Tony asks. Darcy, curled up against the outside of her trailer, tilts her head to the sky, letting the cool desert wind soothe her flaming face. She's more tipsy than she anticipated. Turning her head is enough to make her stomach clench, threatening to empty itself all over Mr. Rich and Insensitive.

"You forgot her birthday," Darcy informs him, because as much as she doesn't want to be with her friends, she isn't going to let the man who had hurt one of them get away with pretending everything's all right.

"I know," Tony sighs, settling down beside her. His suit likely cost more than her college education. He still lets it get all covered in dirt and sand. She glares at him because she can, and because at this second she hates everything about him.

"Twice," Darcy reminds him.

"I know."

There isn't much more to say to that, so Darcy sits in silence, listening to the night-time sounds of the desert, and Tony's loud, harsh breathing. The night is lit by the subtle blue light just barely visible from under his shirt. Darcy's heard long speeches about how the scars on his chest are matched only by the scars inside. She's getting really tired of feeling sorry for all the people she promised to be mad at.

"I heard you tore your tracker out," he says. Darcy holds up her arm, still blinking with light, and frowns at it. Tony shows her his own forearm, the shirt pushed up. There's something just a little off about the pulse of light there. It's out of time with hers, the light fading away a tiny bit too slowly. Darcy runs her fingers over it, feels more than sees the scar there in the dim night. 

"You invented your own that tricks their sensors, didn't you?" Darcy asks. Tony's grinning as he nods. Darcy laughs, the first time she's done it under her own power in a week; it feels good, like a weight is being lifted off her shoulders, and when Tony scoots closer to her, pressing his hip against her side, she doesn't move away.

"Didn't have much else to do," he says, making the same face of frustration that Darcy's been feeling in her chest since they'd last left here.

"I still don't," Darcy says quietly. Tony takes her hand in his, turns her wrist over and presses a long metal tube against her skin. Darcy closes her eyes. She flinches in anticipation and sighs a little as the pressure on her arm lets up. When she opens them again she sees bare skin, lightless.

"Not really your job, you know?" Tony asks. Darcy's still a little lightheaded. She has to think about his words for a minute before she can tell if she's meant to be insulted or not. It still doesn't make sense, has the ability to be taken so many different ways, and she doesn't know how she's meant to decipher it.

"What do you mean?" She asks, in lieu of getting mad right off the bat. She's heard it's a bad idea to fuck with Tony; something about destroyed credit and old family business being bought and trashed. Darcy didn't pay much attention. She didn't have either of those things anyway, so anything he did to her life was bound to be a bit of an improvement.

"I haven't seen Pepper so happy since I gave her the deed to Potts tower," Tony says, his mouth twisting wryly. Darcy's seen the plans for the building, and greatly approves. It actually looks _nice_ , like a place Darcy could dream of living in one day, rather than a large penis pointing at the sky and saying 'see! Told you I wasn't small!'.

"So I'm the official cheerleader?" Darcy asks, stretching her legs out. It feels so good that she lies down on the ground, curling her arms under her head as a makeshift pillow, and reaches for the feeling of tininess she used to get whenever she looked at the stars. "We're in trouble, then. I tried out for the cheerleading team in high school. I did so badly on the cartwheel that I broke someone else's leg, tore down half the props and almost set fire to the stage."

Tony snorts, resettling himself so that he's lying beside her. He makes it look good, like looking at the stars is a rich people hobby that Darcy'll never be able to understand. Darcy flicks her tongue out at him, and he echoes the gesture.

"Well, this is great," Darcy says, squinting her eyes and trying to make sense of the constellations. "But if you're done with this whole Simon Says thing, I'd really like some clarification."

"How 'bout the comic relief?" Tony suggests. Darcy holds her hand out, middle finger extended until she knows he's seen it. He might have a point about that; she's not the hero, or the spy, or the plucky sidekick who can save the day at the last minute. If she just has to focus on keeping every one sane, with the occasional side of laughter, she may actually be able to survive this. Sure, she might not be the funniest person in the world, but she has a couple of old joke books lying around somewhere, and if all else failed she could just flash her breasts at everyone.

"That's not very nice, Tony," Steve says, settling down on Darcy's other side. He sounds so much like her grandmother, the non-senile one who had this bizarre thing about always being nice to everyone, that she has to stifle a laugh in her hand. Steve's obviously puzzled. He smiles at her anyway and she's almost able to forget that this is Captain America, the star of more than a few of her late night fantasies.

"Are you single?" She asks hopefully, and this right here is why she loves vodka. It makes the awkward questions so much easier.

"Eternally, right Mr. Freeze?" Tony butts in. Darcy considers kicking him, but she's getting a little concerned about her violent impulses lately. Steve presses his lips together, pretends at disapproval. There's a sadness around his eyes that makes Darcy want to cuddle him until he smiles again. 

"Don't worry about it," Darcy advises, hooking her pinky around Steve's. Steve frowns, and Darcy squeezes it gently, letting go before he can make more of it than she meant. "You save the world. Chicks dig that. When you're ready, you pretty much just have to show up somewhere, tell them you're looking for a girlfriend, and you'll be fending them off with that shield of yours."

"That's what I keep telling him," Tony says flippantly. He doesn't look at Steve as he says it, and Steve doesn't look at him. Yeah, Darcy's a not so closet slasher, but she's almost mostly positive that she's not imagining the sexual tension here.

"I'm going to go," she says, pulling herself to her feet. She's still a little unsteady, and she wavers a bit before she fully catches her balance.

"Go where?" Tony asks, propping himself up on his elbows. It's criminal that a man with facial hair can look so damned good; the next Sisterhood meeting she manages to get through without alcohol poisoning, she's proposing a midnight face shaving. For the good of female kind.

"Over there," Darcy says. She wants to get away from them just in case there is something she's interrupting, but she isn't ready to go back inside just yet. She walks, one foot carefully in front of the other, until she's twenty feet away from them and plonks back down, grateful for the easy give of the sand. "Here. Here's good."

"Why don't you go inside?" Tony calls back. Darcy can hear the laughter in his voice.

"Don't wanna!" Darcy shouts, knowing that everyone around can probably hear her, and refusing to care. "I want to stay out here. Want to still pretend that the world's the same."

She closes her eyes and lets her alcohol befuddled mind lull her off to sleep. She can almost pretend she's camping, back in Minnesota with her cousins, the last days of summer drawing to a close before she's hauled, screaming at the top of her lungs, back to school. It's a nice memory, a happy one, and it's the only thing she has to hang on to to fight all the confusion.

***

Thor is back when she wakes up, accompanied by a guy that hits all of Darcy's buttons: tall, dark, more than a little crazy. It's her first boyfriend all over again. She figures he must be Thor's bat-shit crazy brother, and there's a growing risk that if she spends too much time in his presence she'll end up locked in the principal's office with her panties up the flagpole and a prescription for preventative STD meds.

Right. She's chaining herself to Natasha or Maria and hoping that one of them is scary enough to frighten him off.

"How long was I asleep?" Darcy mutters. She's cuddling the blanket she'd woken up under, a soft, muted rose cashmere, around her shoulders. Steve's at the breakfast table, blushing. She'd been right on the money when she'd guessed he'd be the one to give it to her. Darcy gives him a gentle kiss on the cheek, and she can feel it heat up even more under her lips. She tries not to laugh; it's not Steve's fault he's so shy. 

"Three days," Tony says at the same time Pepper says "only a few hours."

Darcy hopes that she's imagining the whole Tony/Steve thing, because despite what Pepper says, she's clearly not over the whole Tony debacle. Darcy pops into the seat between Pepper and Natasha to show her solidarity, offering the flask of vodka she'd snatched before she absconded from the meeting. Pepper smiles, shaking her head. Darcy debates pouring it in her cereal. Her rumbling stomach discourages her, but it's a near thing. She's a tiny bit regretful as she digs into the huge bowl of cocoa krispies. 

"So what's up with tall, dark and demented?" Darcy asks when she regains her equilibrium. The air is tense; there's clearly been more than one argument already. Darcy's a big fan of the get it out in the open and yell about it later approach, but that's with people who don't have as many firearms so she's beginning to think she might have made a tactical mistake.

"My father believes that he will better serve his punishment here," Thor says carefully, a protective hand hovering somewhere near his brother's back. Loki looks more like he wants to be party to a decapitation than a hug. With the long hair, Darcy figures he could well be the next honorary member of the Sisterhood of People WAY Too Sick of Brain Damaged Superheroes. "Helping the realm he so carelessly harmed."

"And I keep trying to tell you that I don't give a rat's ass what your father thinks," Fury says, pacing in front of Jane's novelty blackboard. "We aren't his penal colony."

Darcy giggles a little at penal; across the table Tony is doing the same. Natasha swats her gently over the back of the head, which is just another example of hypocrisy from the woman who thinks that fart jokes are the height of humour. 

"My father insists that the best way for my brother to make amends is to do so here," Thor says. He's starting to sound decidedly unhappy. Darcy feels sorriest for Loki; it's almost like she's back in Principal Woodhouse's office being ratted out for letting all the frogs out of the lab again so she wouldn't have to dissect them. 

"We don't need his help," Maria snarls. Loki looks at her with a raised eyebrow, and she glowers at him, pursing her lips. "Fine. We don't _want_ his help. At this point I'd take the Bysrah over him."

"I'll second that," Tony says, raising his hand pointedly. Darcy tucks her legs carefully under the chair and smooths her sand-wrinkled jeans. Loki's got the poker face down. If Darcy wasn't so familiar with the whole being talked about when she's right there in the room, she'd almost think he was unaffected.

Hell, maybe he is. Considering how deranged his brother is, it might just be the base level of Asgardian crazy. Darcy's being a bit speciest, applying earth logic to those two.

"He destroyed half of Manhattan," Fury points out. Darcy's tempted to mention that he wasn't exactly the only one blowing things up, but apparently Fury's a mind-reader, too, because he fixes her with a death threat in the form of a glare, cowering her before she could speak.

"He was unwell," Thor says. Loki makes a face; behind him Jane walks in, does a double take at the sight of Thor and shrugs, pulling up a chair next to Darcy. Some sort of peace must have been made last night while she was drunk; she's reacting far too rationally for Darcy's liking. Then she opens up her clenched hand, letting Darcy see the towelettes of forgiving crappy boyfriends, and smiles.

"Does he get a say in this?" Darcy asks, slipping one of the papery things out of the pack and placing it on her tongue. It doesn't do much for the, thankfully mild, hangover, but it leeches the tension out of Darcy's shoulders, and that's always a bonus.

"No," four people say. Darcy looks at Loki and shrugs her shoulders in defeat. She's rewarded by a glare that's still less scary than Fury's, so she figures she'll stick to S.H.I.E.L.D's side this time around. 

"Does he know anything important?" Jane asks, tugging on Thor's cape. He must have a wardrobe full of them. When he left he was dressed in Steve's best dress shirt and a pair of jeans that Darcy had purchased specifically for him, because nothing anyone in S.H.I.E.L.D owned came close enough to fitting. Thor leans down, presses a soft kiss to Jane's lips that Jane accepts patiently, a game smile on her face. "No, seriously. Does he?"

Darcy buries her head in her hands, shaking it miserably.

"You're hopeless," she tells her boss, then turns to Thor and addresses him sternly. "She's glad you're back, but you're not going to get anything out of her until you answer. Also, just because you came back this time doesn't mean we've forgiven you for the last two times."

"He has fully deciphered the device, yes," Thor says. Jane rewards him with a shy kiss to his huge, meaty hand. When Darcy groans she's joined by enough other voices that she's almost drowned out.

"She's allowed to be happy," Darcy says, straightening her back. _No one_ gets to complain about Jane until they've lived with her as long as Darcy has, and she glares at everyone who's tried. It's probably not that effective, what with Darcy being the least frightening person in the room, but that's what best friends are for, and Darcy's been falling down on the job lately.

"Hypocrite," Tony says under his breath.

"There's a lot of that going around lately," Darcy growls, folding her hands in her lap.

"Will he help us?" Steve asks abruptly. They all turn to look to Loki who examines them so condescendingly that Darcy fingers the taser she has taken to carrying in her pocket, and imagines all the places she could stick it for maximum effect.

"You'd take help from him?" Maria demands. She's got that rebellious thing going again. It suits her; Darcy decides that once all this is over, she's introducing her to anarchism and re-opening her YouTube account.

"He tried to destroy New York," Tony reminds them. It's the most serious Darcy's ever seen him. She wants to agree with him on principal. Somehow, rubbing the arm that should put her firmly on his side, it just makes her want to point out how very screwed they are either way.

"What other options have we?" Thor asks, almost rhetorically. It seems a bit strange, hearing the _we_ like Thor's some puny human who can't just do a runner whenever he likes; unless they hit Asgard, this is pretty much a volunteer gig for Norse Gods. "If Loki will help us, it will make things that much easier. We will have a much greater a chance of defeating them."

"I could be convinced," Loki says eventually, right when everyone starts to get restless and Darcy is trying to make silent bets with Jane over who's going to crack and punch someone first. 

"Let me guess," Jane says, lowering her elbows to the table and propping her head on her fists. "You're going to pretend to be all Return of the Jedi Anakin Skywalker for your father, but really you're just pissed that they get to keep it when you didn't."

Darcy's been spending too much time with Jane, because that makes perfect sense. Loki looks at Jane like she's growing an extra head out of her torso; actually, pretty much everyone was looking at Jane that way, which doesn't say much for this particular group of secret agents' pop culture knowledge.

"You're going to pretend to be redeemed for your father," Darcy translates, flummoxed at how people could get this far in life without seeing Star Wars. She pats Steve on the arm because he's the only one with an excuse, and Darcy doesn't want him to think she's mad at him too. "And you're really just here because you're angry that they get to rule the world when you weren't allowed to."

Darcy has said more than a few things in her time that caused a room full of silence. She should be glad it was a scientist translation, rather than an overly loud discussion of how irritating her time of the month was, the naïve assertion that her homecoming date wasn't screwing her best friend in the boy's bathroom and, memorably, on her 9th birthday, the fulfilled promise that she was about to eject a large portion of her cake on the magician and his assistant.

 

"At least one of you is intelligent," Loki growls. Darcy looks around, at three of the five most intelligent people on the planet right now, at an entire room full of people who know more about everything than she does, and preens.

"Brother…" Thor says, softly and sadly. Jane blinks at him twice, then tilts her head, frowning.

"Have you forgotten his name?" She asks, hitting her forehead against her hand. "Oh my God. You have, haven't you? No _wonder_ he's so angry-"

"I have not!" Thor says, and through some miracle he seems to find Jane amusing rather than offensive. His eyes turn shifty, and he looks down at his feet rather than addressing any of the people watching him. "My mother…she believes that Loki has forgotten how much we care for him. She suggests that I remind him as often as I can that it matters not where he came from. He is our family, and we love him."

"That's sweet," Darcy says, smiling encouragingly at Loki. "My cousin was adopted from China, you know? Best kid ever. She's still my favourite."

Admittedly Annie is Darcy's best (non-Jane) friend, and the only person in her family who didn't judge her for that brief, but spectacular, relationship with the lead singer of a garage band who never did quite make it bigger than Paddy O'Reilly's Bar on 1st St.

"This is ridiculous," Loki tells her. He turns out to be the king of rolling his eyes. It's almost artistry, how he so perfectly balances duration with dedication to showing as much of the white as possible. 

"This is _not helping_ ," Maria says. Darcy sighs, sinking back in her chair. There might be a point there, sure, but Trickster God or not, Darcy's having a difficult time believing that any one man would be enough to save their world from certain doom.

With that thought, Darcy's officially gone over the edge to melodramatic. She straightens her shoulders and vows that she's going to be better about all of this. She's sick of being the scared little girl at this awesome convention.

"Will you help us or not?" Fury asks Loki directly. Loki pretends to consider it, pursing his lips and letting the moment drag on. Darcy counts at least four separate hands reaching for firearms of some description. She has no idea how Jane's done it, but her boss is holding some sort of weird-ass thing that looks like it's been cobbled together from part of a lamp, Mr. Muggles' Jedi Halloween costume and the taser Darcy abandoned when the local sporting goods store upgraded to the newest, purplest taser on the market. 

"I have little choice," Loki sighs. Darcy looks at Thor, remembers how there always seemed to be that little thread of fear hiding under his bravado, like Odin really is as terrifying as the myths paint him, and shudders. She's so busy being distracted by that thought that she almost missed the sea of fingers that go up to noses. The practice comes in handy, and she's not it in just enough time to land on _not_ -Loki's team for the next round.

"Tell us what you've been able to work out," Natasha says, in that blank voice that makes Darcy want to hide under the table until the explosions have stopped. 

"Their full invasion plan, the next three weeks' worth of troop actions and their end goal for the planet," Loki says, and with that much knowledge, Darcy officially grants him the right to sound as smug as he wants. 

"Your best estimation, then?" Coulson asks. He's been plastered to the wall since Darcy walked in. She's only just noticed how white he looks against the mottled grey plaster. 

"No. It was on the crystal," Loki says, while Steve and Tony still and Natasha and Archer dude draw their firearms. "It's essentially a knowledge compendium, designed to be distributed to the personnel in the area."

"So a book?" Jane asks. Somehow while Darcy wasn't looking she's half climbed into Thor's lap. Darcy wrinkles her nose at her and Jane shrugs, a half smile on her face, the sign they made up for _what the hell, might as well give it a shot_.

"Yes," Loki sighs, and he looks out through the glass walls, towards the sky. Darcy's never really done the homesick thing, but watching Thor imitate the movement makes _her_ long for Asgard, which is a bit ridiculous, considering the anti-feminist, war-like douchebags that seem to populate the place. 

"Do I have to be here for this?" Darcy raises her hand, waving it in the air until she catches someone's attention. "I can guarantee I'm not going to understand it, and I want to be better packed this time. Last time I ended up with one pair of jeans, three ball gowns and seven pairs of Jane's underwear, which I don't understand, since I told her to _use her own damn drawers for once_."

"Mine got full," Jane says mulishly. Darcy's cleaning them out before she leaves, because the last time Jane's drawers were full Darcy found out where all their crockery had gone, and almost had to start up an embassy for the colonies of new life forms living there.

"Go," Fury says. Darcy's up and heading outside before he has a chance to change his mind. It's almost as exciting as playing hooky from school, and since there's no department store nearby to spend the day trying on clothes she'll never be able to afford, Darcy eyes the row of trailers sitting under the desert sun and grins.

Tony's by far the best. Yes, it's full of electronics and she almost gets decapitated by some of his inventions that have a little too much of their own personality, but the man's sunglasses collection is _epic_. She's set aside a pile of pairs that make her look everything from femme fatale to badass fighter pilot, which is a scarily specific look.

"Do I want to know what you're doing here?" Tony asks, poking his head around the bedroom door, and how awesome is it that there's actually a separate bedroom in this thing?

"Trying on your stuff," Darcy says cheerfully. She's imagined him in so many different positions with Captain Hotness that wearing his stuff without his permission doesn't seem all that intrusive. 

"Keep 'em," Tony decides. Darcy squeals a little, tucking as many pairs as she can in her pockets. She decides to wear 'beach Barbie on Spring Break' and she poses seductively for him, which doesn't end so well. For all its separate bedroom-ness there's not a lot of space, and she ends up hitting her arms on two completely different walls. "Nice work, Darce."

"Thanks," Darcy says, dropping dramatically down on the bed. She pulls the glasses down her nose, peeking at Tony over the top of them. Her voice goes small, and she's reminded again how very much she wasn't made for this life. "Do I want to know what the plan is?"

"Remember my first suggestion?" Tony asks. His grin is so terrifying that Darcy has to cuddle a pillow to her chest and bury her face in it before she can speak again.

"I'm trying not to?" She asks. Her voice comes out muffled. She sighs as she drops the pillow back on the bed, tossing the sunglasses after it.

"Prank war?" Tony reminds her. Darcy winces, sliding off the bed and hiding beside it.

"Seriously?" She squeaks, clutching on to the ridiculously soft quilt and promising she's stealing it as payment for this misery. "That's…no. No, Tony."

"Yep," Tony says. No one should be allowed to be this cheerful about what's got to be a world ending scenario. Darcy stands up, smooths her shirt and takes three deep breaths, struggling to remember the meditation instructions she'd learned from the yoga instructor who'd moved to Puente Antiguo for exactly three weeks before she learned the difference between 'peace' and 'boredom'.

 

"No, Tony," Darcy says, and if her voice wavers a little she's all right with that. Strength is a multi-step process. "This isn't funny anymore. We're not waging a _prank war_ against alien invaders. It doesn't make sense. It's not…it's not some Syfy channel special, Tony, it's real, and they're _here_ , and I don't want to do this anymore. It's not funny, and we can't do anything…"

Darcy loves Pepper more than life. Somehow she's here, squeezing past Tony and wrapping her arms around Darcy, patting her back while she cries. It's like that thing Mom never did, but that Darcy saw from her classmates and her cousin, and all the kids she wanted to be but couldn't. It's more comforting than Darcy had imagined it, and she'd imagined a lot.

"I know it doesn't," Pepper says in that voice that she must use to calm children, soothe angry investors and convince Tony that Stark technology doesn't need added explosives. "It doesn't make sense at all, but bizarre as it is, large scale mayhem _does_ look like the best option. It's…"

"Oh, hey, exposition time!" Tony cheers gleefully. Pepper and Darcy glare at him. Pepper pats her back one more time, and if she was the kind of person who'd stick her middle finger up, Darcy figures this'd be the time it happens.

"No fatalities, annoying, gives us more of an opportunity to break into places they're keeping information, since your stunt the other day has made them much more careful about security," Pepper says flatly. Tony shakes his head sadly, but Darcy's had enough of all of it.

"Okay," she says shakily, hugging herself so tightly that her ribs start to hurt. "Okay. You guys…you go do that. I'm going to stay here, okay? I'm just going to hide here, and let them put in another tracker, and go back to waitressing or something, and you can save the world while I just…while I wait. Okay?"


	3. Chapter Two

**[Action Plan 1.84.0045: Insurgency]**

_Reports have been emerging regarding a small group of human insurgents. They have, previously, gone by the name The Avengers (see supplementary material). Intelligence suggests that the human approval rating for these terrorists is currently low so public arrest and - if required laws broken - execution should not cause insurmountable problems._

_It is possible that trackers for these individuals have been disabled, which will make tracking impossible. Please keep supplementary materials with you at all times and refer to them if suspicious regarding the identity of criminals you encounter._  
 **Required equipment:** Supplementary material knowledge crystal, advanced defence kit (inc. human sedation stick).  
 **Expected timeline:** Must be complete within 30 earth-solar cycles.  
 **Projected resistance:** Great. Care is required.

Phase Two: Rebellion

Darcy lost her belief in a higher power when she was eleven and Bark Simpson had gone to the great fire hydrant city in the sky. She regains it when she is twenty three, and forced to live in Tony Stark's Malibu mansion with his new frenemy/love interest (childhood crush Captain America), his ex-girlfriend (the most terrifyingly competent woman Darcy has ever met, and possibly the second platonic love of her life), and the ex-girlfriend's new flirtation/filing partner (a scary government agent who is entirely unable to die).

She only regains this belief because she is now of the firm opinion that said higher power hates her guts and is punishing her for sins that she knowingly committed. If it counts, Darcy is now very sorry.

"I think god hates me," she says aloud, because this is the sort of thing that everyone needs to know. Everyone translates, in this case, to JARVIS, who's not actually spying on her in the bath. Well he is, but not in a way that's creepy beyond the general _holy crap, you have an AI watching you all the time? Even when you have sex?_

Yes, Pepper had assured her. Even when he had sex. 

"I don't imagine God would have the energy to hate anyone," JARVIS says, his soft British voice hitting every foreign accent kink Darcy has. "He has so very much to do."

"He has to hate me," Darcy says, stroking her bubble beard in the universally accepted way of mad scientists. It proves that she should have been assigned to Jane's team: without a mad scientist to take care of, her psyche goes a little nuts and tries to make her fill in the gap that's clearly missing in the world. "Do you see where I ended up?"

"A large mansion on the beach doesn't sound like much of a punishment," JARVIS says. Darcy snorts. 

"Did you see the 'incident' at dinner?" Darcy asks, making the quote signs with her fingers. "I'm pretty sure Tony's due a concussion, or brain damage or _something_."

"I see everything, Ms. Lewis," JARVIS says. Darcy giggles a little. The lecture on feminism and which title to call her is the only victory she's won since she got here. She'd meant it when she'd said she wanted to hide out in New Mexico until this invasion was over. 

A kidnapping that involves a private plane, a luxury canopy bed and the full run of Tony Stark's accessory closet is still a kidnapping, and Darcy is suggestible. She's far more at risk of Stockholm Syndrome than any of the other people Tony's inevitably kidnapped over the years.

"I still say Steve missed on purpose," Darcy mutters. The water is starting to cool. When she holds her hands up they're so pruney they're starting to hurt. She reaches for the gigantic soft towel, picked from a huge linen closet that held towels in more colours than she can differ between. This one is pale lavender, the colour Darcy's superhero outfit will be if she's ever allowed one.

Tony hasn't been seen since the argument that started with a snarky comment from Steve on wasting food and ended with a debate on whether Steve was built with that stick up his arse, or whether it was an unfortunate serum side effect that had somehow been left out of the literature. JARVIS assures her that he's safely in his lab tinkering with some thing or other, although all attempts to verify this have been met with a security system that Jane would kill to set up around her equipment to keep nosy S.H.I.E.L.D agents the hell away from her special frankentronics.

She curls up in the small arm chair by her bed, flicking the television on out of habit. The broadcast is the flat, plain image the Bysrah display whenever they're not showing an official message or censored rerun: a frilly cut-out circle on a Steve worthy red, white and blue background, with the supposedly comforting words 'Stay tuned for further instructions'.

Summoning up the energy to get dressed takes more energy than Darcy anticipated. One of Tony's towels covers more of her than most of her summer outfits, so she decides to say fuck it and lays her head on the arm of the chair, tugs the towel down to cover her knees and keeps her eyes closed until she falls asleep. 

She's so used to waking up to see natural disasters repeating on TV that a power plant pulsing with electricity is only surprising when she realises that means there's actually something broadcasting.

"TV!" She shrieks gleefully at the top of her lungs. She has to hold the towel tightly to her chest, but she's able to run easily enough. She knocks on all the doors on her floor until she gets an answer at one of them. Coulson doesn't look particularly happy to be woken up, but Darcy takes his hand and drags him to her room anyway, pointing at the screen. "TV!"

"Oh thank God," he whispers, which is more emotion than Darcy's ever seen from him. He hits the intercom button on her wall, cleverly hidden behind Darcy's bedhead. Darcy's going to have some loud words to say to Tony when she's not so busy being happy. "Stark! Up here now."

Now, with Tony, can mean a lot of things. This time it means within five minutes. Darcy is so pleased that she hugs him. She even forgives him for sneaking a peek when her towel drops a little, exposing the top of her breasts.

"Seen my latest masterpiece?" Tony smirks. Darcy ducks back into the bathroom so she can exchange her towel for a bathrobe to avoid showing everything when she dances around her bedroom, crowing wildly and spilling a lot more about her reality TV watching habits than she'd originally intended to.

"How did you do it?" Pepper asks. Darcy finally gets it, when she sees the awe on Pepper's face and the way Tony's face softens when he sees her smile: how they'd worked at all, even if it was one of the shortest romances in tabloid history. 

"C'mon Pep, you know me," Tony says. They share a secret smile that makes Darcy's heart ache a little with loneliness she wasn't aware she was feeling. She brushes it off, choosing to focus on the first truly happy thing she's seen in weeks, twirling around in the only thing she remembers from her childhood ballet classes. 

"That's why I'm asking," Pepper deadpans. There's no meanness behind it. 

"How long will it last?" Coulson asks, which is a bit of a buzzkill.

"No idea," Tony says. He doesn't seem all that upset by it. "It's a general bypass right now, but when I see what they use to try and take it down I'll get a better idea of how to counteract their anti-Stark tech."

"Anti-Stark tech?" Coulson says with a small wrinkle of his nose. "Is this a thing now?"

"It's always been a thing, Phil," Tony tries to leer; Darcy sees the familiar twist of his lips, but there's something missing behind it and she can't tell what it is. "Just a different set of people trying to undo me."

"Is that _Thor_?" Pepper cries, and they're all so distracted by that that only Darcy notices when Steve wanders in, looking more than a little lost. Darcy holds her hand out to him. She waits until he notices her attire and looks away, swallowing hard, then grabs a hold of his fingers when he comes close enough.

All that huge, super-soldier strength is a wonder when she needs something to hold on to. It is Thor, at a power station Tony identifies as a hub somewhere in the Midwest, one that has the potential to take down more than a few neighbouring states if it's properly destroyed. 'Destroyed' seems to be Thor's goal, and the camera flickers repeatedly as stray bolts of electricity ricochet off Mjolnir and into the metal surroundings. 

"Thor!" Someone shrieks. Considering the people with her, Darcy has to assume it's her. She's not sure where they came from, but a team of Bysrah are dropping, one by one from the sky, and moving into formation around the utility pole Thor's attached himself to. The lightning, accompanied by thunder that sounds louder on camera than it does in person, lights them up garishly. 

"He'll be okay," Steve whispers in her ear, his hand squeezing hers tightly. "He'll be fine."

It sounds like a prayer, more fervent than all the ones Darcy's been practicing with. On the television Thor grins, staring right at the camera as the lightning brightens and blanks out the screen entirely. When an image reappears she sees that he's gone, a tiny speck in the sky. The power station seems to be on fire. 

"Wow," Tony whistles. Darcy works to catch her breath, her free hand covering her mouth to stifle further embarrassing noises. 

"He can't do stuff like that," Darcy whispers. She has no illusions about the immortality of Norse Gods; she's _seen_ Thor die, and yes he came back to life, but that sounds to her like the sort of thing that should only happen once. This is why cat-gods are far superior, and would be her deity of choice if she ever started a cult: nine lives mean eight different chances to be a god-like fuckup before you're stuck behaving yourself.

"Damn right," Tony says. He's pulled his tablet out of somewhere, jabbing at it with greasy fingers. "At least not until we can work out something just as good. Pep, you up to hit headquarters tomorrow and see if we can get some misinformation started?"

"On it," Pepper says, determined. Darcy whimpers as she looks longingly at her bed. "You can stay if you want, Darcy, it's fine."

"No it isn't," Tony says. His face is hard when he looks at her. She remembers what he said to her on the plane, when she'd grabbed the first backpack that looked like it could contain a parachute and threatened to jump out.

_"It's all on us, Darce. I know you don't feel like you can do this, I get that. But we don't really have a choice here. You can be as scared as you want, you can sit there saying you're useless, but we both know that's not true. You can't build the weapons, or punch out the bad guys, but you're smarter than you think, we both know you're brilliant at planning things, at getting things organised, and remembering all those little details that we tend to forget when we're trying to focus on the big picture._

_"And answer me this: would you be able to forgive yourself if the world doesn't get saved? If you never know whether that one thing you remembered might be able to make a difference?_

She'd never pegged Tony as the sensitive type, and it might not have been the most comforting speech ever, but it's enough to force Darcy to pull herself together. To stop whining and to do the same thing she had when Donny Collins had made giving her an orgasm his summer project: fake it 'till she makes it.

"No, it isn't," Darcy agrees. She gives up thoughts of alcohol, of weird alien medications and of the idea that she might ever be able to get out of this. "So. D'you need a new assistant? 'Cause I can totally assist. It's my thing. I kept Jane alive for over a year."

"I think I could do with a bit of help," Pepper smiles. It doesn't quite make Darcy feel better, but it's a start. Darcy can work with that.

***

Pepper's office has a better view than Tony's mansion. Darcy's never been the biggest fan of the beach. She can't swim well and sand always seems to end up in places she doesn't want it to, scratching against her washcloth in the shower when she tries to scrub it out. The cityscape under the window she has nosed pressed to is much nicer: elegant and remote, and not at all likely to be a party to giving her the bad kind of crabs.

"The last assistant I had ended up being part of S.H.I.E.L.D," Pepper sighs, typing rapidly into a document that Darcy's been informed will be distributed to all eligible Stark Industries employees after lunch.

"Don't need to worry about that with me," Darcy says, parking herself on the side of Pepper's desk and leaning over to read the words over Pepper's shoulder. It's all written in business-ese, a language she's never bothered to familiarise herself with that ends up saying a whole lot of stuff like _synergy_ , _actionable_ and _proceduralize_ , which contain a lot of syllables and mean absolutely nothing. "I wouldn't join S.H.I.E.L.D if they paid me Tony's salary."

"I think you've already joined them," Pepper points out, which Darcy thinks is entirely unfair. If anything she's joined _The Avengers_ , which is a subsidiary of S.H.I.E.L.D, and...yep, it's only been two hours, but she's officially spent too much time in the corporate world. 

"So what does that mean?" Darcy asks rather than try to untangle exactly what her affiliations are now.

"That we're stopping production on everything but the programs Tony's designing now," Pepper says, saving the document with a resolute click. "And if anyone feels like they can't be a part of Stark Industries new direction should take a few weeks off, with pay, until we can settle further employment options."

"Do you think they'll get it?" Darcy tugs her too short skirt down to her knees, ignoring the strange hover-ship that sails slowly past the window. "I'd probably just take the money and run, I'll be honest here."

"I'm fairly sure people have been expecting something exactly like this from Tony since…" she cuts herself off, shaking her head. Darcy nods in sympathy.

"We need a word for it. Not D-Day, because I think that would probably upset Steve, but something new, you know? Like F-Day or something," Darcy muses.

"F-Day?"

"Fuck off and die Day," Darcy says. She doesn't think it's that funny, but Pepper doubles over laughing, her cheek typing random letters on the keyboard, giggling until she gasps for breath. The computer dings; Darcy watches an e-mail pop up on the screen, full of short hand and misspellings that make it look like a totally foreign language.

"Tony wants you in the lab," Pepper says immediately. Darcy stares at her in wonder.

"That's what you got from that?" Darcy says, but she follows Pepper's instructions, placing her palm, fingertips and eyeballs in all the relevant places until she finds herself in a lab that looks like an engineering clone of Jane's basement of doom.

"Darce! Hold this," Tony says. Steve is already there, holding on to a pipe with a patient look on his face. Darcy grabs for the cluster of wires obediently and rolls her eyes at Steve. She needs to start lifting weights; her arms start to ache in a pathetically short amount of time. She's rescued by Steve who takes her burden off her with a cocky smile. Darcy uses the pause to reconsider exercise in favour of super soldier serum. 

"What are we playing with?" Darcy asks, free to wonder. She knows enough not to go too far. If this place is anything like Jane's she's as likely to trip over a pile of loose wires as she is to get tangled in some newfangled robot that Jane's programmed to scream _exterminate_ at the top of its lungs while administering a rib-crushing hug.

Halloween prank Darcy's nicely padded ass.

"Some sort of untraceable communications system," Steve supplies when Tony's grumbles fail to make sense. "He's been trying to explain it to me, but…"

"Yeah, I get that," Darcy says, running her fingers through the layers of dust settled over the cluttered workspaces. "Scientists and the people who love them."

"Yeah," Steve says. His laugh is half-fake. Darcy watches him out from under her lashes. 

"You can always move to New Mexico," Darcy offers. "Scary dark-haired genius with a penchant for making her own stuff? You'd feel right at home."

"Hush and stop trying to steal my robot arms," Tony says. Steve doesn't move, but he has that sad look on his face again, so Darcy slaps Tony's arm for him. Tony doesn't budge. Darcy would give anything for that sort of attention span during finals.

"D'you want to talk about it?" Darcy hedges, curling up to Steve's side and resting her head against his bicep. 

"His father was the same," Steve says. Darcy wonders if she's gotten the wrong end of the stick here, whether it's someone else Steve's pining over. "Always concentrating on work, and I would be standing there laughing with his assistants, and sometimes…"

He trails off, his eyes glinting in the bright artificial light. Darcy wraps her arms around his waist. She keeps forgetting that this is Captain America, a superhero. Here she was trying to comfort him with a stupid little hug and all of this had come from answering one stupid ad in her college newspaper asking for a science intern. 

Surreal doesn't quite cover it.

"Sometimes?" Darcy prompts. 

"Sometimes Peggy would come in, or Bucky, and Howard wouldn't notice. He was so absorbed in what he was doing he didn't know we were there."

"So you miss her," Darcy flounders, wishing it was as easy to fix him as it had been Jane. "Or, uh…him, or…"

"I miss all of them," Steve says. He refuses to look at her. She feels more than a bit ridiculous hanging off him like some sort of groupie. He follows her when she tries to pull away, so Darcy stays and hopes that hugs can be as comforting to everyone else as they are to her. "I miss knowing what was happening when I saw Howard working, and Peggy's smile, and Bucky not letting me get away with anything."

Darcy pats him awkwardly, her hand disturbingly small against his huge arm. Steve smiles at her, but it's small and fragile. Darcy hates thinking about it, about losing her entire world and all the hope of it. She doesn't have the strength Steve has, the ability survive it this well.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. Darcy wants to kick everyone who's spoken to him over the past months, who's ignored the pain that's so much a part of him Darcy can feel it when she touches his skin. "I shouldn't…"

"Sure you should," Darcy says uselessly. She hangs on more tightly, trying to show him that she's not going anywhere, and knowing that there's no way she could promise that. "If not me, then someone, you know? You shouldn't hold on to it by yourself."

"It's better this way," Steve says. Darcy doesn't know what to say to refute that.

"Well, this'll be the most depressing first broadcast ever," Tony says. He's holding on to a weird piece of metal that lacks all the sleek grace of a new piece of Stark technology, but makes up for it by containing more buttons than Darcy can count. 

"Sorry," Steve says, his eyes clearly saying _see?_ , but Darcy doesn't and she never will. "I can do a great Green Hornet. He's still around right?"

"Remind me never to show you that movie," Tony says. He's relaxed a little, losing some of the tension from his shoulders. 

"Is it done?" Darcy asks. She's had enough of awkward silences. She wants to jump into this one before it has a chance to become one of _those_ moments that stay so uncomfortable that they'll have a hard time speaking to each other again, and will eventually end in either permanent estrangement or a horrible drunken hook-up on a boring New Years Eve.

Not that Darcy has any experience with anything like that.

"Done," Tony confirms. "One for everyone. Don't ask me to explain how it works. I'm a builder, not a teacher. But it should work long enough for us to make up for the TV networks they're no doubt trying to seize back from us. Also means we might have a chance at that other government thing Clint was talking about."

Clint! Now that Darcy remembers that she can stop calling him Archer Dude. Even in the privacy of her own head it seems a little disrespectful.

"How are we getting it to everyone?" Steve asks. He sounds so captain-like that Darcy wants to salute him.

"Coulson's liaising with Hill and Fury," Tony says, looking at his device rather than meeting Steve's eyes. "He'll hand over a few of the prototypes then."

"How quickly can you get them built?" Steve presses, letting go of Darcy's waist. She shivers a little, more for Coulson, Maria and Fury than for herself.

"You'll have to ask production," Tony says, attention already wavering, refocusing on all the gadgetry that's cluttering his desk. "Pepper should have that ready by now."

When the prototype goes to production, Darcy follows it. She's the one most familiar with wanting to chicken out of heroism, so she figures that if she hangs around the people doing the grunt work she might be able to catch someone who's about to screw it up for all of them before they do. It's a detail thing, and Tony's right. She's great at that.

She's also the first person to test the long-distance capabilities of the device Tony's christened the highly original STFUAlienComm. She uses it to bitch him out for not giving her a tracker removal device while she digs her newest one out with a pair of tweezers, a plastic dinner knife and the helpful beak of a highly curious magpie.

***

"Oh _hell_ no," Jane's voice comes through the STFUAlienComm tinny but audible. Darcy's been avoiding the TV since Thor's last starring role. She'd have a hard enough time hearing that one of her friends have been killed, she doesn't particularly want to have to see it. "No, no, no, no. No."

"What is it?" Darcy says, frantically rummaging around her unmade bed for wherever it's hidden the remote. She feels something hard under the fabric and pulls it out laughing. The vibrator is a disturbing shade of green, and is exactly the reason why one should never confess to Tony Stark how long it's been since they've last gotten laid. "Who died?"

"Our sanity," Jane says. Darcy gives up on the modern technology thing and does it the old fashioned way, bouncing across the bedroom to turn the TV on with her actual finger. She sees what Jane means immediately. It's hard to miss the gigantic announcement prohibiting most types of legal drugs, cigarettes and, Darcy notes with dismay, all forms of alcohol.

"No way!" She protests, groaning. "Liver damage? Kidneys? Who cares about that? I need booze!"

"How's Tony?" Natasha asks. Darcy winces at the thought of going down to Tony's lab after hearing that. "He won't be taking it well."

"I'm going to have to go look, aren't I?" Darcy asks rhetorically, then grins, addressing the ceiling. "JARVIS? How's Tony?"

"I believe Mr. Stark is remodelling the basement to support a rum distillery," JARVIS says. Darcy is surprised that it's a surprise at all he's gotten to it so quickly.

"That can't end well," Natasha growls.

"I'll keep him from tasting too much of the product," Darcy promises. The silence isn't encouraging. She blows a raspberry at both the Judgey McJudgersons who can't even see her. What right do they have to critique what she's doing? "I won't taste too much of the product. And I'll get Steve to check in on Tony."

"Good choice," Natasha says. Darcy's already pulled out her notebook, doodling elaborate plans for the label on _Lewis' Luscious Rum_ , the company she'll own when the country is so used to Tony's rum that they won't want to drink anything else. Tony's got enough to worry about. Taking the alcohol company off his hands will be a favour. 

Especially considering all the work he makes her do in distributing the damn stuff.

***

As much as Darcy's always wanted a shifty overcoat of her very own, wearing it out in public was never part of the fantasy. It's made worse by the soft clinking she can't quite stifle, of rum, gin and their newest product, a hard apple cider that Darcy insisted on for the people - and she is only one example of this, _shut up, Tony_ \- who can't drink large amounts of hard liquor without humiliating themselves horribly.

A middle-aged woman skulks up beside her, face plastered with the overly-fake innocent look amateurs always use when they're trying to sneak around for the first time. Darcy should give lessons on it; _how to really look innocent: a learner's guide_. She's got a wad of bills fisted in her hand. Darcy gives her most winning smile.

"Girl Weasley, Jack Sparrow or John Dorian?" Darcy asks. They're not the best of references, but the colour-challenged annoyances haven't cottoned on yet, and it still gives Darcy an illicit thrill to know she's getting away with it right in front of them.

"Uh…Weasley?" The woman asks. Darcy slides her hand in her pocket. If anyone were watching they would think she was flashing someone. This whole experience is just freshman orientation week all over again.

"All yours," Darcy says cheerfully. She separates a few bills from the wad the woman has shoved at her, a couple of small ones that she keeps on hand more as souvenirs as anything else. Currency as Darcy has known it is slowly being phased out. While the hard, thick crystal coins are great at not being ripped and don't quite carry the same worry of drugs or faeces, they're not really _money_. "Here, go ahead. First billion customers special, sponsored by Tony ‘the T-Man’ Stark." 

The woman sends her one of the side-eye looks that imply that Darcy's a bit of a nutter. Darcy doesn't blame her. She'd tried to talk Tony out of coming up with a gangster name; Natasha, Bruce, Coulson and Pepper had tried to talk Tony out of coming up with a gangster name. Darcy's overwhelmingly glad that he wasn't allowed to pick his superhero name.

"Fine," Darcy mutters. "See if I invite you to stay for the show."

Darcy's spot has been chosen with the amount of care that the former president would have envied. It's got a brilliant view, perfect for her new camera glasses to catch the display and broadcast it to Tony's makeshift TV tower. It's enhanced with little to no likelihood of getting smashed to pieces in the process. 

"You in place, Darcy?" Steve asks through her new earpiece, a stunningly designed pair of earrings that Darcy is never taking off, accidental bathroom transmissions be damned. 

"Aye aye, Cap," Darcy says cheerfully. She fingers her glasses, turning the loose screw on the side that adjusts the zoom. She's keeping these things when she goes back to school. The idea of being able to sleep through Professor McBoringpants lectures is more tempting than it should be, now that she's promising herself she'll be the best student in the history of academia. "Any idea what Tony's got planned?"

"None," Steve says, longsuffering as always.

"Well, I've got the drinks," Darcy says, wedging herself into the corner between buildings. "You bringing the popcorn?"

"I prefer milk duds," Steve says. Of course he does. Darcy wants to pinch his cheeks and tell him how adorable he is; if he gets them out of whatever Tony's getting them into without them all being arrested Darcy might even restrict herself to his face.

"Have you been to many movies?" Darcy asks, tightening her coat around her to block out some of the sudden chill. "Because you'll probably have been disappointed wi-. OH MY GOD."

"Darcy?" Steve demands, his voice painfully loud in her ear. "What's happening? Are you all right?"

"OH MY GOD," Darcy repeats, jumping so high that she dislodges her glasses. She fumbles the catch, has to scramble to get them back in place and recording again. "He's insane. Steve, he's officially insane, oh my god, it's a DINOSAUR."

"A WHAT?" Steve shrieks, mixing hysteria with fury in a way that makes Darcy fairly sure that, at some point in the past year, he's seen Jurassic Park.

It's a dinosaur. A large, awkwardly moving, hauntingly realistic t-rex. It's stomping down the street, alternating between roaring and Darth Vader style breathing. The Bysrah aren't screaming, not how Darcy would classify it, but they're running and scattering, all high pitched chitters and waving arms. Darcy fights the urge to run as it comes closer, turns until it sees Darcy and pauses, lowering its gigantic head until it's staring her in the eye.

Up this close Darcy can see the metal, the dully glinting scales. She can hear the faint creak of joints as they shift, and the seamless functionality that could only come from Tony. She also sees all her childhood nightmares come to life, and she doesn't know whether she should be laughing or screaming.

The enormous mouth opens, a rumble coming from its cavernous belly. Darcy whimpers, scrunches her eyes closed. She is raising her hands to shield her head when it _burps_ at her, and she's struck with hard, stinging projectiles. She catches one instinctively. She opens her eyes to see a Hershey's kiss, perfectly wrapped on her palm.

"Tony, you idiot!" Darcy hoots with laughter. The t-rex snorts, hot air and candy raining down on Darcy, then turns to the growing crowd of humans that have stopped screaming, and Bysrah, who haven't. "You absolute and complete shit-head!"

The crowd is surprisingly restrained as they line up for handfuls of free candy. In between she sees glints of metal. Darcy suspects that Tony has disregarded everyone's orders and included free samples of his communication device. All the better to sow rebellion with, Darcy agrees with him now; she's officially on his side for _everything_.

It's like a tastier Mardi Gras, with dancing and boobs flashing everywhere to try and earn more than their fair share of chocolate. Darcy picks a few people she can be sure are over twenty-one, because she still has standards, and slips random bottles of moonshine into their outstretched hands.

"Stop! You must stop!" One of the Bysrah (Darcy can't tell if it's exceptionally brave or just remembering that it's in charge) steps in front of the dinosaur with both hands raised. 

"Oi, quit it!" One of the men Darcy supplied yells. Darcy detects the faintest trace of an accent, a gorgeous Australian one. 

She bounces excitedly at it. "What, are you taking our holidays now?"

"Holidays?" The alien asks. That spot on its arm looks like a deformed penis. Darcy sniggers.

"Yeah!" Someone else pipes up, slightly muffled from a mouth full of chocolate. "It's…Extinction Day."

"Extinction Day?" Darcy is utterly enamoured by the confusion on its face; she points her glasses at it carefully, and mentally designs the poster she's going to put everywhere she can find. She's totally winning meme of the year award for this one.

"Yeah," the Australian says, crossing his arms angrily over his chest. "Where we remember all the species that are extinct, and they bring presents. My favourite day of the year."

"You get presents from large imaginary animals," the Bysrah says, and the doubt is not so fun. 

"You haven't heard of Christmas?" The Australian guy asks.

"Or Easter?" Someone else pipes up.

"Halloween?" Darcy adds.

"Valentine's Day?"

"Mother's and Father's Day?"

"Wow, we really like presents," a young kid, out way past his bedtime, realises. 

"Presents are awesome," his friend says, and Darcy adds that photo to her collection. In twenty years she'll be able to say she was here, in this moment, when Tony Stark invented Extinction Day and the world found a new reason to bitch about how materialistic a formerly altruistic holiday had become. 

Darcy loves pessimism so much.

"Shit!" Darcy says, pressing on her earrings. "Tony, Tony a whole bunch of them are coming, and they're holding something."

The dinosaur throws its head back and roars, candy falling like streamers into the eagerly cheering crowd. Its steps are carefully destructive: avoiding living creatures, but causing huge amounts of damage to Bysrah support systems and the pre-fab buildings they seem to favour for storage and crowd control.

Its path leads towards the beach, far enough away from Tony's mansion that Darcy tells herself it won't be immediately obvious who's responsible. As though there are so many other people who have the capability to design and build something like this. She waves goodbye to its quickly whipping tail as it disappears from view, and is rewarded with a long, deep bellow and the faint smell of smoke.

"I don't know what to say," Steve says, dropping down from the building behind Darcy. He's frowning, the few bits of hair that poke out from under his cowl slick with sweat. Darcy offers him a tiny pack of milk duds she'd fished out of the debris.

"Just say it's awesome," Darcy advises him. "You got to see a dinosaur, and you won't want to kill him."

"It's awesome," Steve says obligingly. He nibbles on a piece of candy, but he's distracted and when the Bysrah start looking and pointing in his direction Darcy's stomach sinks. 

"Steve, what are you…no, Steve," Darcy says. He smiles. She wants to be reassured, but these moments always hit her like a punch to the gut, a reminder that nothing is as fun as she wants it to be. 

"I'm the distraction. It's all right," he says. Darcy hugs him; she doesn't want it to be goodbye, but she wraps her arms around him and squeezes tight just in case it is, and she can't find the words to say it. "I know what I'm doing."

Darcy salutes him quietly, looking away as he starts to run. Across the street from her the crowd falls silent. One by one people raise their hands to their foreheads: a sea of salutes as Captain America darts between them, twists around and vanishes behind a building. Darcy's not the first person to let her hand drop to her side, but she's not the last, either. The Australian dude, whose name turns out to be Greg, offers her a swig of her own rum and she accepts it gratefully.

"Think he'll be okay?" Greg asks her, soft enough that the kids that are still there, chattering excitedly, don't hear.

"He's survived worse," Darcy says, making a face as she takes a swig of substandard booze and lets it burn a path down to her stomach.

In the morning, while Tony's poking at the television and glaring at Steve, Steve's eating cereal and glaring at Tony and Darcy's gobbling chocolate and randomly hugging them both, there's an announcement that all future Extinction Days will be celebrated without live-action props. A special thank you is given to Stark Industries for the entertainment, and for not harming anyone in the demonstration of their new technologies.

The joy Darcy feels is extinguished when Captain America is named public enemy number one and a short clip is shown of a man - formerly serving life in prison and released on his own recognisance following the Clean Slate amendment - is executed for murdering a young mother of three. 

She's out of rum, but the gin tastes just as bad and the new supply of it is ready.

***

It's strange, watching Pepper wander around agitated. She doesn't do it the same way normal people do, with sharp movements, harsh words or loud complaints. Instead Pepper organises. Everything in Tony's mansion is now colour coded and labelled, including Darcy. She's fond of her new, purple label; she's got it plastered across her forehead, half-hidden under her bangs.

The doorbell chimes with a sharp ding. Darcy's not the only one who jumps, and the sheepish smile they all share is close enough to a bonding experience that Darcy feels a little warm inside. Coulson strides in before the door fully opens, suit perfectly pressed and a large cut slashed across the place Darcy's label sits.

"Phil!" Pepper calls out. Her freakishly long legs make short work of the living room/command centre Tony has set up. Darcy sees nothing platonic about the way her hands cup his chin. There's _definitely_ nothing platonic about the kiss they share. Darcy blanches when she sees tongue involved.

"Tony," Steve says, soft and quiet. Tony's gone white, a paleness emphasized by his dark hair. He looks sick enough that Darcy grabs his hand so that he'll have something to grab on to if he falls down.

"So that's happening," he says when Pepper breaks away, flushed. "That's a thing now, is it? Right. Okay."

"Tony," Pepper whispers. She doesn't let go of Coulson, but Darcy can see that it's a struggle. She's shaking a little. Darcy can't tell if it's desire or fear, or whether there's a lot of both happening at once. "I'm s-"

"Don't," Tony says, his hand slashing through the air in the international sign for _shut the hell up now, please_. "I don't want to hear it, you don't want to say it."

"Stark," Coulson says, angling his body to shield Pepper from view. Darcy tucks herself into a corner as tightly as possible. She feels hideously uncomfortable being witness to this, but she can't leave without being more of a disruption. 

"Phil," Tony says, his adam's apple jumping as he swallows. "It's fine, don't worry about it."

Steve places a hand on his back, barely touching. Tony jumps, pushing him away and turning his back on all of them. It's been a while since Darcy's cried for anyone, but she'll admit right now that Tony's bringing tears to her eyes. She wipes them away with her sleeve, the garish iron man hoodie that she'd thought was so funny a few minutes ago. 

"Jesus, people, calm down," he says, and when he turns back his face is back in the Stark Mask that Darcy recognises from all the Pinterest pictures she's now deleted. "It's fine, I'm fine, we're all fine, aren't we? Just peachy."

He pauses, as if he's considering saying more. Instead he whirls, striding out of the room with a brief pause at the bar. His supply of good alcohol is going down more quickly than Darcy is comfortable with. It has to make her the world's biggest hypocrite. She holds a brief argument with Steve, told through narrowing eyes and soft sighs. She wins by refusing to leave her corner, and Steve trails after Tony reluctantly, grabbing a large bottle of water on his way.

"Not how I planned the reunion," Coulson says dryly, but his eyes are soft and crinkly, and Pepper is pressed tightly against his side. "I didn't quite expect…"

"No," Pepper agrees, more gently than Darcy's seen from her. Darcy grinds her teeth when they kiss. She gives up when she sees tongue again, making a loud sound of protest. 

"Right, well if you guys'll be fine here by yourself," she says, inching towards the door. She ducks past the couch quickly, guessing that's the first place they'll head for if they get really freaky and she doesn't want to be stuck under them if they get there before she can get away. "I'll just. Uh. JARVIS? You busy tonight? We should date, or uh…"

"Sorry, sorry," Coulson mutters, straightening the tie that Pepper's messed up. "I would prefer it if you stay."

Darcy's horror must show on her face, which prompts a new round of apologies that make Darcy feel distinctly uncomfortable.

"Actually, I had a message for everyone," he says, separating from Pepper regretfully. "One out of three is better than none, I suppose."

He flicks on the TV. Darcy's developing a bit of a phobia about the whole concept. When she gets back to Real Life she might give up the whole electronics age and go back to books. It served countless generations well, who's she to buck tradition, anyway?

"What are we watching?" Pepper asks. She's curling herself on the armchair opposite Darcy, which is a relief in more ways than one. The biggest being, of course, that there's no room for a man in black to squeeze in beside her.

"A Loki Special Production," Coulson says. Pepper and Darcy exchange _looks_ , the one specifically reserved for members of the Sisterhood who are about to be screwed over by the Evil Outsiders and know there's nothing at all they can do to stop it.

"If he blows up New York again," Pepper says cheerfully, pouring herself a glass of wine from the bottle she'd placed on the coffee table at dinner. "I will hunt him down and stab him with the remains of the next season stilettos I haven't had a chance to buy yet."

"What she said," Darcy agrees, cuddling her own glass to her chest and sloshing half of it over her shirt. "With less stilettos and more _priceless museum wreckage_."

She's still pissed that her membership to the Museum of Natural History, a graduation present from Annie that she knows her cousin couldn't afford, was made unusable when the entire museum ended up in a gigantic pile of rubble underneath a flaming space-snake. If that god-like twat destroys another thing Darcy loves, she's shoving a shard of dinosaur bone right up his supernatural ass.

The screen flickers, then changes to show Clint and Natasha looking beautiful and extremely well-armed. In the background is a group of nervous looking mothers, holding babies, pushing strollers and generally looking far too fragile and breakable for Darcy's comfort. Around the edges, mostly out of the camera's view, Bysrah occasionally pass by in brightly coloured flashes. 

Behind them, looming from the building like a large, green King Kong is the Hulk, a wide smile on his face.

"Oh no," Pepper whispers. 

"This can't go well," Darcy says, dropping her glass of wine on her lap so she doesn't crack it with her tight grip. It looks like she's peed grape juice. That's probably preferable to the pain and blood.

"They assure me they have it under control," Coulson says grimly. Darcy's not sure what control passes for in S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters, but brain damage must be a large part of it if he can watch what's unfolding without wanting to scream.

On screen Natasha lets out a sudden whoop, firing her gun so wildly afar from the Hulk that Darcy can't believe anyone would think she was ever aiming for him. The aliens' coordination is fantastic, Darcy has to give them that. They pick Natasha and Clint out of the crowd instantly and start swarming, moving to entrap them in a circle of flailing purple and orange. 

In unison, a movement so perfect that is has to have been rehearsed, the mothers start screaming and clutching their children to their chests. The babies react with crying, the high pitched sort of shriek that she's previously only heard in movie theatres and crowded airplanes. 

It's almost beautiful, the complicated dance that Natasha and Clint do around the Bysrah and the screeching mothers. It's only a matter of time before someone gets too excited, gets careless, and she's not at all surprised when it's one of the Bysrah who accidentally backhands a young woman clutching tightly to a toddler. 

She falls to the ground, shielding her baby's body with her own. Behind them the Hulk roars. The screen is filled with flailing green muscles, ever so lightly picking the woman and the baby up and jumping to safety, laying them on the ground outside the fight zone. 

There's no room on Pepper's chair, but Darcy clambers on to it anyway, half on the arm and half on Pepper's lap. Pepper's grip is painfully strong. Darcy is grateful for how grounded it helps keep her. 

One by one the Hulk removes all the people who aren't aliens or spies from the fight, blocking blows from alien weapons that Natasha and Clint can barely dodge with his body. Darcy keeps her eye on all of them, counts the children obsessively to make sure that each of them is moved, and then hidden. He's on the last one, a tiny baby whose arms are moving, flailing in terror, before he gets corralled by Bysrah. 

When he trips, the baby is underneath him.

Pepper and Darcy cry out in unison. Hulk gets up quickly, bellowing in the face of the alien who stopped him. Where the child was lays a china doll, face still intact while its limbs are shattered into tiny peach coloured pieces. The camera flashes away abruptly. Darcy barely gets a chance to see, to reassure herself, before the picture vanishes. 

"What the fuck," Darcy whispers.

"Loki," Pepper says, and she laughs. It takes Darcy a moment to get it, then she remembers Thor's stories of Loki changing shapes, of vanishing and creating a hundred copies of himself. She joins in Pepper's laughter because she's so relieved, but it weighs heavily in her stomach and she's glad there's no more than a sip of wine in her belly, because it's at risk of coming straight back up.

"He's there," Coulson points to one of the Bysrah, one Darcy had barely noticed because it's wedged behind a hot dog seller and barely moving. The hot dog vendor is a gigantic man, so big he must eat most of his wares. She almost kicks herself when she realises _duh, you idiot_ , that's Thor.

With the last baby out of the way, and the screaming mothers finally silent, Natasha looks to the sky. Darcy's not sure where it's come from, or how it got there without anyone noticing, but the plane she's christened Avenger's Airway is flying over the top of them, a ladder dangling down. Natasha and Clint grab a hold of it, and each other, while Thor grabs a hold of Loki and raises Mjolnir. 

The resulting rain obscures most of what Darcy's trying to see. All that's visible is Hulk hollering and jumping off in a bounce that would make Superman jealous. The Bysrah are more competent than the ones Darcy's seen before; they break off into groups, summoning their own flying machines, and give chase. Darcy has no way of seeing where any of them go, but she keeps her fingers crossed for all of them and forbids making terrified calls that will just be a distraction.

"I can't handle this," Pepper says. Darcy recognises the hopelessness, knows she's barely two days out of it herself. She doesn't have the talent for grand speeches, so she gets up and makes room for Coulson to squeeze in beside his new whatever the hell they are instead. 

"You'll be fine," Coulson reassures her, his thumb stroking the base of her neck. Darcy pretends to find the view out the window interesting, the waves nearly invisible in the dim moonlight. 

"Our turn now," Tony says from the intercom. 

"It's not a competition, Tony," Steve answers. Darcy's a bit apprehensive about the two of them being left alone there right now. 

"Sure it is, Cap. Us against them, except right now _them_ is chasing a bunch of my friends, and one gigantic assclown, across New York City. So I'm going to find a way to distract them. You can sit there and radiate goodness if you want, or you can help. It doesn't bother me." Tony signs off before Steve can reply. 

Pepper and Coulson are still distracted, curled together on the too-small arm chair. Darcy wants to go down to the lab, to help wherever she can, but her feet lead her back to her bedroom where JARVIS helpfully turns the TV on for her.

She curls up on top of the covers, cuddling tight to one of the expensive memory foam pillows she's always wanted, and watches the news until she falls asleep. In her dreams she sees bulletins of all the ways the Avengers were captured, and all the public executions that follow.

***

On the upside, Steve's no longer the top of Alien's Most Wanted. The sucky part is that Natasha, Clint and Bruce are, which doesn't do much for Darcy's morning mood. Combine this with the leaders of three other failed rebellions being hit with some sort of death ray and the incoming news of thirty eight riots, rebellions and other demonstrations of civic disobedience currently in progress, and Darcy's hands shake as she forcibly restrains herself from adding moonshine to her coffee.

"Are you all right?" Steve asks. Darcy jumps, spilling some of the hot liquid over her hand. She tears up, wiping it off with the dish towel before it can burn her. "Wait, let me…"

"I've got it," Darcy sniffs, rubbing it against the soft fabric of the nightshirt Pepper found for her. Steve's got a large, red bruise right at the base of his neck. Darcy's eyebrows shoot up when she sees it. "I could ask you the same thing."

"Yeah, Tony just…" He flushes a little. Darcy hands him her coffee wordlessly. He takes a large gulp of it while she starts to brew another mug for herself. "He was upset, and he wanted…"

"Rebound sex?" Darcy asks gently. She means it to be gently, anyway, but Steve averts his eyes. Darcy has never wanted to debauch someone as much in her life. It sucks that it's _Steve_ ; sweet, unhappy, brave and reckless Steve who'd make the best brother in history, and would cause severely uncomfortable feelings if Darcy ever saw his penis. 

"Is that what they call it these days?" Steve says gamely. The coffee maker beeps at her, reminding her that one of the ridiculously complicated settings she needs to factor in has been pressed wrong. Darcy shakes her head at it, trying to convince herself that juice is just as good at waking her up. Steve, clearly a member of her psychic community, hands her mug back. Darcy's so happy at having even half a cup of delicious caffeine that she cries a little.

"How do you feel about it?" Darcy asks, reaching for all the training she'd gathered from half a semester of Psychology 101. Nearly failing it probably doesn't help her cause much, but Darcy's nothing if not nosy.

"I don't feel much like talking about it."

"I get that," Darcy says, patting his coffee mug-warmed hand. "I do, it's fine. Just…if there's a problem, you'll tell someone, right? It doesn't have to be me. Hell, it can be Mr. Muggles for all I care, just…someone?"

"I will, Darcy, thank you," Steve says. They should bottle super soldier kisses, because the one he drops on her cheek is freaking _magical_. "It's…"

"Complicated?" She suggests.

"Yes, that," Steve deadpans.

"You should put that on Facebook," Darcy muses, still amused by the friend request she'd gotten from both the Official Captain America account and the quiet, nearly empty Steve Rogers one. It was almost as comical as finding out Tony played the unofficial Avengers Assemble game, and was dangerously close to catching up to her agent level.

It's not the real Facebook; Tony's got a remarkable amount of important stuff back online, but Facebook isn't one of those things. He has a backup of it stored on a local server. Darcy's hounded him about it since she found out, and he still hasn't cracked and told her why. Darcy's beginning to think she really doesn't want to know. 

"Captain America and Iron Man are It's Complicated?" Steve says, and he's laughing a little now. "How do you think that'll end?"

"Spectacularly," Darcy predicts, chortling a little at the idea. "It'd be the best thing ever, you have no idea."

"This isn't just another Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy thing, is it?" Steve asks her, his lips twitching.

"WHO TOLD YOU ABOUT THAT?" Darcy shrieks, grabbing for the collar of Steve's shirt. Of course _this_ is when Tony walks in, and now she'll never find out who's been spreading terrible lies about her, because Tony has that determined look on his face that means they're all about to get in all sorts of brilliantly dangerous trouble. 

Brilliantly dangerous, in this case, refers to a new gadget thingy that is so complicated it would make Jane proud, and large canisters of things that Tony won't tell anyone about, preferring them all to have plausible deniability. 

It also involves a midday trip to downtown Los Angeles. The aliens are getting better at the whole tracking thing; when her new tracker is put in, there are stern instructions given to make sure it doesn't get wet, stabbed or otherwise hit. The next person to get caught is told the same thing, though, so maybe Darcy's excuses are just becoming legendary.

This one doesn't get stabbed. Burning, on the other hand, is magnificently entertaining when it's happening to something that's already out of her skin.

Darcy's job, she discovers, involves exactly that. She's directed to a small, non-descript building that's surrounded by yet more glowing crystals. Darcy's not entirely sure what all this new-age shit is, but when she gets home she's throwing out that souvenir amethyst she'd half-believed might work and smashing every other piece of hippy paraphernalia she has to bits.

"Now what?" Darcy whispers to her earrings, Betty Boop ones that look just a little bit too much like Darcy for it to be a coincidence. 

"How's your tracker?" Tony asks. Darcy can hear the smug grin from the bastard, but she gets the hint. It's not easy to wander around an obviously secure building while looking nondescript, but she waves her arm around absently and pretends to be looking for a lost contact. It makes little sense in retrospect, what with her still wearing her camera glasses. This is why Darcy likes to have scripts delivered in advance. 

Eventually a grumpy looking Bysrah wanders out and sticks another one of the damned things in her arm, commenting about how badly scarred the area was, and that she should seek medical attention. Darcy has a bit of a panic attack before she realises the thing really does just want her arm to get fixed up. She pointedly doesn't look at Iron Man quietly sneaking into the building behind them.

"Come, come, in here now," the alien says. Medical attention isn't hospitals anymore, Darcy finds, it's just purple and orange aliens with garish yellow bracelets who act a hell of a lot nicer than the unadorned ones who keep sticking her with things.

"I hurt myself," Darcy tells one of them grumpily, holding out her arm. In truth she's getting more than a little sick of continually digging the crystals out and having the same gnawing pain, but some days it's about the only really rebellious thing she thinks she can do. 

"Poor thing," it murmurs blankly, the first idiom she's heard one of them utter. It sounds mechanical, like its reciting a script. Watching the way these things are interacting with everyone around her, Darcy realises that's probably not far from the truth. "There, all done."

Darcy had only been distracted for a few seconds, but when she looks down she sees that yes, again, her arm is perfectly healed. 

"Shame you can't cure cancer that easily," Darcy tells the Bysrah a little bitterly. It flicks the tool it's holding around its fingers until it glows green. It doesn’t smile, but its ears do twitch a little and Darcy thinks the orange spots might look a bit brighter. 

"Yes, yes, we are close on this," it says. It's ridiculous, and all kinda of unfair, that some crappy alien jerk can say that when they haven't spent the past hundreds of years dying from it and doing everything they can to prevent it. "We can fix some already. Some are harder, it will be fixed soon. Do you have it?"

"What? No," Darcy says. She knows that kicking it would be the dumbest thing she can do, but she wants to so badly that her body vibrates with it. "I was just curious."

"You are interested in medicine?" It asks, and the ears twitch again. "That is good. You come, talk to us here, and you will be a medical practitioner."

"Dr. Darcy," Darcy says, choking on her anger. "My mother'd be thrilled. And I'll do that. I will. But I have to go now."

Her part of the task gone, Darcy doesn't have anywhere to go. She's never been to LA before. It's always been a dream of hers, and wandering the streets should be far more exciting than it is. Everyone looks…quiet. Like all the life has been drained out of them and replaced with a vacant sort of fear that makes their eyes glassy and strained.

She makes her way to Mann's Chinese Theatre, unenthusiastically placing her palms in all her favourite's celebrities' prints. She fits better on some of the people she doesn't like, which is a metaphor for Darcy's life. 

"Darcy? Where are you?" Captain America asks. Darcy's a little sad to realise that there is such a big difference between Cap and Steve. 

"Hollywood Boulevard," Darcy says. It makes her wonder how many of the crazy people she used to see on street corners were just talking in code to some sort of microphone Darcy couldn't see. She can't decide whether that thought makes her feel better or worse about life right now. "My hands are the same size as Roseanne's, should I worry?"

"I wouldn't," Steve says. "Don't move, we'll plan around you."

"What if I want to see?" Darcy asks, pouting. She has no idea how much she's being monitored, but on the off chance Tony's watching her she's been told that her pout should be weaponized. 

"You'll see. You'll just be out of danger while you do," Cap says, and Darcy lets her pout drop. "While you're at it, see if you can encourage people to stay off the street."

"Does it matter how I do it?" Darcy asks, fingering her phone in her pocket. 

"Not to me," Steve says and signs off. Darcy grins. All those photos she shouldn't have taken are about to come in really handy.

"Who wants to see Thor naked?" Darcy yells, holding the phone up. The man was _buff_ , and surprisingly modest for someone who looked so damned good naked. He'd whipped a towel in front of the best bits as soon as he caught her watching, but it wasn't quick enough to prevent her getting in a couple of pictures that were going on the front of Jane's Christmas cards this year. 

"Yeah right, lady," someone mutters as he walks past. Darcy flashes the phone at him and he gapes at her. "Holy shit!"

"I've also got Tony Stark!" Darcy shouts. "Tony Stark naked, ladies and gentlemen, only seen by millions of people around the globe!"

If things get hairy, she figures, she can pull out the pictures of shirtless Steve, though that seems a little disrespectful when he's all complicated and confused. There might be one of Natasha in there somewhere, but that's being saved for either a really drunken wedding toast or a failsafe method of committing suicide. 

If there's one thing people can be counted on for, it's wanting to see naked pictures of celebrities. If there's a second, it's assuming that a crowd means good or free things for them and gathering around, even when they have absolutely no idea what they're crowding for. 

"Oh, ew!" Someone on the outside of the crowd yells. Darcy tries to stand on tiptoes to see what Tony's got happening, and everyone in front of her steals the idea and does the same thing. Darcy's elbows are well-trained weapons, particularly good at pushing her way through crowds, bar bathroom lines and parade spectators, but hell if she doesn't practically step onto the goo before she sees it.

It's green, of course. All good goo has to be green, movies and comics are very particular on this. It smells like a combination of wet dog and grass, sticky to the touch. Darcy jumps to avoid getting it all over her shoes, an idea that never occurs to the Bysrah, who are darting in and out of it without forethought. 

Darcy shepherds as many people away from it as she can, muttering things about police, Iron Man, free chocolate and, in one special case, flashing her boobs to a particularly stubborn business man.

"Nice view," Tony says cheerfully. She looks up to see Iron Man flying over the top of them in lackadaisical loops, firing his repulsors at seemingly random intervals. "One for the history books."

"That's going to be my legacy, isn't it?" Darcy sighs over the frantic beating of her heart. "You lot will save the world, and I'll be that chick who showed her breasts that time."

"Best kind of legacy," Tony says. Darcy forgives him for looking, as she somehow seems to forgive Tony for everything, and pulls the last spectator out of the way of the slowly spreading goo. "Ready?"

"For what?" Darcy asks rhetorically. Some kind of spray erupts from his boots, a sickly sweet mist. When it comes in contact with the goo it hardens, trapping all the Bysrah in a close formation that, Darcy sees with a sinking heart - if what she remembers from military history is right - would have been the perfect anti-air attack to knock Tony right out of the air. 

"For this," Tony says. _Something_ happens that Darcy can't quite catch. She blinks her eyes tightly closed; when she opens them, she's being lifted into the air by Iron Man. The mask looks like its smiling and she smacks at it, taking long, deep gulps of breath. 

"Don't you dare drop me, Stark," she shrieks over the whistling air. "I swear to Thor, I will _haunt your penis_ and scare away everyone you ever have sex with!"

Tony laughs, the asshole. She's telling Pepper when she gets home, and she'll make sure Pepper closes his lab, or sells his company, or whatever it is Tony finds as terrifying as flying through the air without a parachute or a reinforced metal frame to keep her alive. 

"I hate you," she says when they land. "I hate you so much right now, you know that right?"

"Join the club," Tony says, his armour breaking away around him. "There's actually a club. It has cards, hats, a secret handshake. I think they meet on Wednesdays."

"I'm so in," Darcy mutters to herself.

"I hate Wednesdays," Tony finishes, clapping his hands together. "So, shall we see what my brilliance has wrought this time?"

"I'm certainly interested," Steve says. Darcy was a little in awe of his ability to show up at exactly the right time, before he'd told her it was just a case of lurking around corners and on top of buildings until he was needed. _Captain Creeper_ doesn't have quite the same ring to it. 

"Come in, then," Tony says. They have to use the big screen TV for it, and none of the half-hysterical news reports make a bit of sense to her. Tony watches her face for understanding. When it doesn't come he gives her the level of disappointed look she hasn't seen since she told him she wasn't the biggest fan of whiskey. "Their communications are down."

"What, all of them?" Darcy asks stupidly.

"The ones here, and in the surrounding states, yes. Most of the US if everyone managed their parts right. Ditto Britain, Russia, parts of China and one of those places on the bottom we don't talk about."

"Holy crap."

"Are you ready for the grand finale?" Tony asks. Darcy is nodding along in defiance of her confusion.

"What do you have planned, oh great Master?" Steve has his head buried in his hands, which Darcy's not sure is appropriate in the hallways of what really has to be the Church of Stark.

"Not me. Prancer's got the next bit," Tony shows more teeth than smile, but it's something. Darcy joins Steve, hiding her head behind a pillow, and waves goodbye to the Church before it ever really got a chance to live.

***

"I still think you've got the wrong person for this," Darcy says, stubbornly crossing her arms over her chest.

"All you have to do is run," Pepper says fretfully.

"That's the problem," Darcy argues. She points to her cleavage, impressive even when it's got a too-tight sports bra and an equally clingy sweater on top. "These don't do running. I don't do running, either, but the girls are the most immediate objection."

"That…they cause problems?" Steve isn't looking at her. Darcy had never thought she'd see the day where a wall, one not covered in porn at that, was more interesting than the twins. 

"You try running with a couple of sandbags attached to your chest and see how you do," she points out sternly. 

"Right," Steve says blankly. "All right, so…"

"So I'll do it," Darcy says. "I just can't guarantee I'll do it quickly enough."

"You'll be fine, Darce," Tony pats her back. Darcy considers it a sign of personal growth that he keeps his hands a respectful distance away from her bra strap. 

"Yeah, right," Darcy mutters. "Let's just get this done, huh? Oh, hey, Loki?"

"Yes?" Loki asks, already in his guise of scary Bysrah agent, surrounded by awesome wacky clones that Darcy can't tell from the real thing. She closes her eyes, puts her hands up to her chest and prays for a happy ending to this, the ability to get out of it alive and that someone will buy her the adorable puppy she saw being walked by a perplexed looking alien on the way here.

He jumps, and Darcy grins.

"Gotcha!"

Having someone chasing you makes running a whole lot easier. For Thor's brother, the guy sure has a hell of a temper on him. 

"Would you stay still?" Loki yells as Darcy weaves through terrified crowds of humans and confused groups of aliens. "I intend to kill you either way, it would be much easier for me if you weren't moving!"

"You're just saying that for the crowd, right Loki?" Coulson's voice comes coolly through Darcy's earring phone.

"Mustn't talk now. Running," Loki says. Darcy's going to kill whoever introduced him to sarcasm, even if she has to invent a time machine and go back to murder his grandparents or whatever it is frost giants have. Darcy hopes they come from eggs; a gigantic omelette would be awesome after all this sprinting.

"I still have that gun," Coulson says. 

"I would never hurt any citizen of this wonderful planet," Loki says. Darcy's beginning to think her sense of humour needs a makeover. Dry quips are all well and good, but if she sounds at all like Loki when she makes them, she's turning herself into Pollyanna and being thankful for the warning. 

"Good. Now shut up and stick to the plan."

Darcy's not sure what the plan is, exactly. She was briefed on it this time, the first mission since the rebellion started that she'd been trusted with the details of. It was also far too much like her freshman history lectures, and Fury had been halfway through explaining before Darcy realised she'd spent the whole time doodling pictures of the Avengers in little space suits and had no idea what had been said.

"Almost there, Darcy," Pepper says. To Darcy's immense relief she sees she's right. She reaches the lobby of Stark Industries in record time. 

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Darcy pants. She's led down a hidden hallway with Don, a man she'd met the other day who's grandchildren are the cutest ginger babies Darcy's ever seen. If anyone's going to eat her soul, she wants it to be those kids. "You okay there, Don?"

"Just fine, Ms. Lewis," Don says, because unlike the man who owns the building, he's a true gentleman. The click of Pepper's stilettos ahead of them is uplifting, in a _all the people you care about aren't going to die today_ way. "You know what's happening here?"

"Sure," Darcy says when her voice comes back to her. "We go out the back way, and try not to cry when we see what happens to all of Tony's offices."

The back way leads them to Loki, again. While Darcy likes Don she isn't beyond using him as a human shield, just in case Blitzen wasn't joking about skinning her and using her skin to seduce all her ex-boyfriends. Don doesn't like the Bysrah any better than she does, and the faces he makes when trying not to react to one that's obviously friendly to them are hysterical.

"Those better be your clone troopers," Darcy says when more aliens start pouring around the building. Loki smiles smugly, his brow furrowing in concentration. There's a line of tape, disturbingly new and obvious, a block away from the building. Darcy wants to pray that all the people surrounding it have been evacuated as promised, but she's slightly anxious that if she does Loki will tear her head off and make her hair into a wig.

He's creative that way.

"You okay, Pepper?" Tony asks, hovering a few centimetres off the ground. "You don't have to look."

"I am looking," Pepper says. "And if the next building doesn't say Stark and Potts Industries on it, I'm having Darcy do something terrible to you."

"It's true," Darcy confirms. "I already have plans. Some of them involve Jane."

"Stark and Potts," Tony says, firing his repulsors and putting more distance between himself and Pepper. "Got it."

"Then do it," Pepper says, like it’s permission Tony needed for something. Darcy offers a small, wrapped chocolate, the hideously expensive type that has always seemed like such a waste to a poor college student, but that she knows Pepper adores. Pepper unwraps it with trembling hands, pops it in her mouth and lets it sit there, melting on her tongue. 

Darcy holds her hand up in a silent salute to the building that's seen so much action. Loki's clones, scarily identical and moving with the same savage grace of their creator, surround the building and hold up their weapons. Darcy focuses on the windows, tries to look at all the AI-less metal creations Tony's stuck in there. She's not thinking at all about any people who might have ignored the hundred memos, messages and fire alarms.

The clones open fire with what looks like rays of pure energy. One of them is close to her, and when she puts her hand near it she feels nothing. Emboldened, Darcy puts her hand through one of the beams. She still feels nothing. It's like putting your hand through a movie's projector beam. It interrupts the picture, but nothing else happens. 

Tony's holding something in his hands. When Darcy looks closer she sees an actual black box, with a real big red button on it. Somewhere in that suit he must be cackling, because he presses it with all the drama and pomp that would suit the opening of his company headquarters, not the destruction of it. 

Even from this distance, one calculated by Tony to be safe, Darcy can feel the force of the explosion on her face. No debris reaches them, of course Tony got that right, but the building buckles like it's been kicked by a titan. There's a sense of majesty to it, this solid pile of brick hovering for a second before it collapses to the ground.

"I've wanted to do that for thirty years," Tony says, sounding funny. When she talks about it to him later, Darcy promises she'll believe him if he tells her it was just the mask, and not something else clogging his throat and stopping his words. 

Loki's clones go in for the kill. Loki himself is clearly fighting the strain of it. From the rubble Thor is pulled out, followed by Captain America. Darcy presses her hand to her heart, reminds herself that the real Thor and the real Captain America are perfectly safe, far away from here, but it's too close to so many of her nightmares to allow her to breathe easily. 

"Please don't do this," Darcy says. She knows it's no more real than any crappy action movie, but she can't bear to watch it even in illusion. "Oh God, please…"

"Stop it," Loki hisses. It takes Darcy a minute to realise he's talking to her, that she's inadvertently been praying again. She can't stop it, she can't fight the tears when she sees Steve's bloody face, or when Thor's arm makes an audible crack and hangs uselessly at his side. 

It was only a matter of time, she knows that, before the real aliens caught up with them, but even knowing they have a relatively fool proof escape plan isn't enough to comfort her. She grabs for Loki anyway, because that's what she's supposed to do, and Pepper makes a dive for Tony. The leader approaches Loki. Darcy doesn't understand why when Tony's got to be the one they know the best.

"You have made your point," the alien says. Loki raises an eyebrow. He does that better than Fury and Coulson combined, she's got to learn how, and remains silent. "We will talk."

"I don't much feel like dying for your pleasure today," Loki says smoothly. "But thank you for the generous invitation."

"No one will die," the alien says. Darcy thinks she might be beginning to get it, because she'd swear it registers as disappointment. "We will talk. Now."

There's no way this can be good.


	4. Chapter Three

**[Action Plan 1.91.0187: Integration]**

_Rebellions are currently reaching unmanageable levels. The group known as The Avengers are enacting the most effective demonstrations; civic unrest in cities they have protested in is over 450% higher than in cities they have not visited._

_Furthermore, this group has invented functionality that disrupts, reroutes and otherwise makes all communication systems ineffective. Current attempts to capture or neutralise are being met with resistance and prompting civilian action that has a higher injury rate than is acceptable. The decision has been made to attempt to integrate the Avengers into the current Public Relations structure._

**Required equipment:** The newest invasion guide (5.497).  
 **Expected timeline:** Unknown.  
 **Projected resistance:** Decreasing.

***

Phase Three: Integration

Jane's glowing, beautiful even in dirty jeans and a ragged flannel shirt that's five sizes too big for her. She's radiating happiness, spreading it around generously; just standing near her is enough to make Darcy feel like she's been touched by something divine. Darcy smacks her.

"You got laid," she moans sadly. "That's so unfair."

"I couldn't help it," Jane says. Darcy's seen Thor naked. Half of LA has now seen Thor naked. If polled Jane's excuse would be given two enthusiastic thumbs up.

"I hate you," Darcy informs her. "I hate you, I hate your stupid boyfriend, and I hate the batteries that keep running out on my vibrator."

"I'm sorry," Jane says. Darcy lets her boss hug her, because she's still Darcy's best friend and, more importantly, she's still going to need a job to get her through grad school if grad school exists next year.

"Do you think I'll get a credit or two for saving the world?" Darcy asks.

"I'll write you an awesome reference letter," Jane promises. "Oh! I also brought you this."

She hands over an envelope, sealed tightly. Inside are a set of snapshots: Jane and Thor cuddling, Thor shirtless and laughing, Loki shirtless and not laughing, Loki shirtless and attacking Thor, Thor bruised, shirtless and pantless. 

"I forgive you everything," Darcy says, tucking the photos in her jacket pocket. "Also if you ever get married…"

"Those are part of the interactive toast," Jane finishes. "I know."

"Do you still have…"

"The pictures of you throwing up on that S.H.I.E.L.D guy? Yes."

"Now I just need to find someone to marry," Darcy says, and this is the first time she's ever felt sorry she hasn't. She's twenty-three. She'd hoped that she'd make it at least to thirty before she started feeling the biological clock thing. There are so many more years left to travel, drink and generally make memories that she'll never tell her kids.

"Think of it this way," Jane suggest, and she points out Thor who's got a cut over his eye, Loki, who's clothes are ripped in entirely un-strategic places, and Coulson, who's holding Jane's frankentronic with a disturbingly happy smile. "They come with the bargain."

"I'm good being single," Darcy says, feeling her ovaries climb up somewhere around her throat and attempt to commit suicide by jumping out her mouth. 

Maria, who has been staring at the building they are to be housed in with what's decidedly not tears in her eyes (something Fury found out the hard, and rather painful, way) shakes her head and smiles uncertainly at Jane and Darcy.

"You look all Angel-like," Jane says. Maria looks at Darcy, like Darcy's a gigantic Jane-thesaurus. Okay yes, she is, but she has other skills too. If her sole job is going to be making Jane understood then she's going to need a whole lot more caffeine and added psychiatric benefits. 

"Tall, dark, emo-ey," Darcy says.

"I always wanted to live in the White House," Maria says, her frown tempered with nervous excitement. "I didn't expect it to happen like this."

"I wanted Skywalker Ranch," Jane says moodily. She and Darcy have very detailed plans on how they're going to break into it. Darcy feels a little betrayed that there have apparently been all sorts of other plans going on in the background. 

"That was almost an option," Natasha says, tugging affectionately on Darcy's loose plait. Darcy hugs her, because she's missed her and because this means she gets to have a buffer against the worst of Tony's absent-minded sexual harassment. 

"What happened?" Pepper asks, an actual paper organiser in her hand. Jane raises an eyebrow. Pepper tilts her head at Tony; the constipated look on Stark's face is so worthwhile that Darcy's officially burning her kindle on the White House lawn and seeing how he likes that. 

"He has a better legal department," Maria says, then shrugs. "Also I promised I'd taze everyone who got in my way."

There is a pause. Darcy knows she's not alone in being utterly terrified. Natasha's look of fascinated contemplation is almost more frightening than Maria's initial declaration.

"I told you it'd work," Darcy says finally. Maria smiles and slips a small, wrapped package into Darcy's hand. When Darcy opens it she finds a long red and silver tube with prongs on the end. Each side is emblazoned with a thunder bolt, and _The Thunderer_ in big, gothic lettering. "This is either a vibrator or a new taser. Either way, know I love you desperately."

Jane opens her mouth. Darcy's spent enough time around her to know an epic tantrum is about to be thrown. Natasha elbows her in the stomach and smiles, a slow process that has Darcy holding her new vibraser up and flicking frantically at the buttons.

"Don't you dare," Natasha threatens her. Jane switches to the pout, but Natasha has epic willpower and even Jane can't crack the façade. "Not after what I've had to listen to this week. You have a large, fleshy vibrator than can _also electrocute people_. You're set."

"What are we talking about?" Fury interrupts. Darcy has been expecting Tony to do exactly that since the beginning of the conversation, and she totally forgets to censor her communication. 

"How many times Jane's gotten laid this week, whether Thor would be better as a sex slave or a taser and whether or not, if we gave him the right incentive, Loki might be up to showing us whether that's an Asgard thing or just a special Thor thing," Darcy says. Fury stares at her. Just when she's expecting to be blown up where she stands he pales, turns and walks away.

"You're officially my hero," Maria says solemnly. Darcy accepts the praise without comment. She's still not sure whether this moment or the boobs flashing thing will be her legacy.

"Just once I'd like to be famous for something that doesn't involve nakedness," she says with a sigh. 

"It's better than what I'm famous for," Natasha says a little sadly. Darcy doesn't have Mr. Muggles on her, but she does have the Thunderer, and hell. She hasn't had it long enough to get truly attached. 

"Want a present?" Darcy asks.

"I have the prototype," Natasha tells her, holding up a scratched and heavily battered one, the lettering almost unreadable. 

"Oooh, taser twins," Darcy says. "I tased Thor once."

"I heard about that," Natasha doesn't bother to hide her smile. "See? History-making and no nakedness."

"You're my favourite now," Darcy breathes. The aliens are doing the waving and chittering thing, gesturing them all towards the White House. Darcy makes a face at them, but Maria's standing all tall like she's about to put her hand over her heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Steve actually _is_ reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. When Tony doesn't pinch his ass and tell him how cute he is, Darcy expresses her disappointment in the language of pouts and heavy sighs.

"Shut up, Lewis," Tony tells her when they're forced into haphazard paired lines, like elementary students heading in from recess. 

"I can still see that bruise on his neck," Darcy counters, sticking out her tongue. "If you tell me you haven't made a grab for his penis, then I don't know you at all."

Tony stays silent. Darcy snorts.

"Exactly. So stop pretending to be all innocent. It's creepy, and we're surrounded by freaky aliens who want to brainwash us. You're not meant to be the scariest thing here."

"Too late," Steve mutters, his hand clamped over Tony's love bite. He's not blushing, which is a hell of an improvement in Darcy's book, but he's also got that half-adoring, half-annoyed kicked puppy look that proves that he either needs a good psychiatrist or one hell of a great rebound fuck. 

"Be quiet now," one of the aliens pokes Darcy in the side with a weird stick thing. She doesn't feel anything, which could be either good or bad, depending on what he just did to her. She fingers the Thunderer in her pocket, and finds it confiscated by three separate pairs of hands at once.

"If I don't get that back," she mutters when the Bysrah is out of earshot. "I'm defecting to them and torturing you all until you're dead."

"Loki's already promised that three times this week," Jane says. She doesn't sound like she wants to kill him, which is probably good for the whole interspecies relationship, but it could also mean that she's gone past the planning stage and is actively implementing the imminent godly death. "Not so scary anymore."

"Balloon dogs in your shower," Darcy reminds her. Jane squeaks, hiding behind her gigantic honey. 

"Be _quiet_ now," the alien repeats. He sounds frustrated, human level frustrated. Darcy takes that as a good enough sign that she's willing to shut up.

"When do we eat?" Fury asks blankly.

"I'm hungry," Clint whines.

"Are we there yet?" Loki snaps, proving that no matter what planet you're born on, annoying your parents is a universal art.

"I need to pee," Jane says, somehow crossing her legs while standing up, a display of coordination that's usually so impossible for her that Darcy has to poke her to make sure she's not one of Loki's illusions. 

"Someone stole my vibrator," Darcy finishes, giving up on the being good plan. The alien _whimpers_. This is officially Darcy Lewis: 1, Everyone else: 0.

***

"For the purposes of this dinner," Tony tells her, claiming the seat on Darcy's right with an over exaggerated huff. "You're an ovo-lacto vegetarian who's allergic to beta-carotene."

"Gotcha," Darcy says easily. She's in her summer pyjamas, a tank top and short shorts that reveal more than half of her underwear does. Her feet are muddy from the sprinkler she set up on the front lawn, and the resulting water fight. She's tracked mud half way through the White House. The aliens lectured her on personal responsibility and assigned her carpet cleaner and a mop. "If they ask, cleaning's against my religion."

"The chocolate in the fountain?" Tony guesses.

"Jane," Darcy says with a wrinkle of her nose. "The mud."

Tony snorts. 

"Right, should have guessed that," he says. He sounds superior. Darcy gets a tingle of excitement at the prospect of all the awesome things he must already have planned. "What religion, exactly?"

"Scientology," Darcy says. "I figure if I piss them off enough, I might be able to get it made illegal in the process."

"I like it," Tony decides. He puts his feet on the table, all ragged suit bottoms and fifteen thousand dollar shoes. He raises his eyebrows in challenge. Darcy matches his expression and leans back in her chair, dropping her feet directly into the soup tureen that one of the Bysrah has just brought out.

"Oops," she says, and kicks her legs a little so the mud makes a swirl in the bright red tomato liquid. "I'm so sorry. I'm not wearing my glasses."

This is true; Darcy's eyesight had been truly abysmal without them, until she'd been cornered by Mr. Adorable, the alien she's totally keeping when all this is over, and had it almost forcibly corrected. Their communications, even in the same house, are still down; Darcy's counting on that to make all of her shenanigans work.

"You must get that corrected," the alien tells her, but he sounds sympathetic. Darcy promises she will as she takes her feet out of the soup and rubs fake tears out of her eyes.

"Tell me I'm not an artist, Stark," Darcy says cheerfully. "I dare you."

"You're an artist," Tony agrees, but he's laughing at her as much as he is with her. 

"What's everyone else?" Darcy asks with a flick of her middle finger. 

"I'm allergic to tree nuts," Tony says, not bothering to pretend that he doesn't understand her. "Pepper's allergic to strawberries, and on the South Beach diet. Bruce is on the Atkins diet, Natasha is Muslim, Clint's Jewish, Thor only eats meat and cheese, Loki eats everything but meat and cheese, Steve only eats things that were also manufactured before 1942, Coulson is on the cabbage soup diet, Fury is on the beer and ice cream diet and Hill's wavering between gluten free, a raw vegan diet and only eating things that are marketed to children."

"I vote for the last one," Darcy decides.

"Done," Maria says, dropping into the chair beside her. She looks at the muddy table, and Darcy's feet, with a pleasant smile.

"Water fight in the front garden," Darcy says. She's getting a bit sick of repeating the story for people who were too busy trying to save the world to enjoy a once in a lifetime experience like lobbing water, mud and some of Darcy's moonshine at people on the lawn of the White House. 

"I think she got one of the Bysrah drunk," Jane says, dropping down into the chair opposite her. 

"What? I did not!" Darcy protests indignantly.

"Did too," Jane says. "I have videos. He was cleaning up the water and got suspicious. Ended up skulling half the bucket and threw up in the antique vase in one of the dining rooms."

"Crap," Darcy says, having a quiet and very intense panic attack. "They're not executing people for that are they?"

"Do not fear," Thor says cheerfully, trailing Jane like a lovesick puppy. He sits in the chair next to her, wraps his arm around her and presses a kiss to her cheek. Jane, flicking through her phone intently, barely notices. "Steve claimed that was the taste of…what do you call it? Flurry-dated water?"

"Fluoridated," Steve supplies. He exchanges a tiny, half-smile with Tony. If Darcy weren't wearing so few clothes she'd be fanning herself right now. 

"You lied?" Darcy gapes. It's worth getting up for, and giving Steve her best bear hug. "I'm so proud of you!"

"It was for the greater good," Steve says modestly, but he's more amused than angry at her, which Darcy takes as another win. 

"The greater good," half the room chants and Darcy rolls her eyes.

"Seriously, dude," she says, primarily addressing herself to Jane. "I confiscated that DVD for a reason. You _need to stop quoting it_."

"Never!" Jane declares. She's found what she's looking for, apparently. Darcy has to admit, the image of a gigantic purple and orange gangly dude tripping over his own feet and vomiting into a priceless heirloom is one of the comic highlights of the year, but America's Funniest Home Videos is fairly low on Tony's list of _things it's fun to make creepy aliens watch against their will_.

"I'm screwed," Darcy says moodily. She could actually go some of that soup now; she's a bit sorry it's got her stinky feet germs in it. "Also when TV is properly back, if this wins the $100,000 prize, Jane and I get to keep it."

"I'm not entirely sure I trust the two of you with large amounts of money," Fury sneaks up behind her. Darcy's spider sense is clearly underdeveloped, because he actually shocks her. She needs superpowers; she might be awesome, but even she probably couldn't get the drop on Fury with The Thunderer. The probably part is what makes her keep it in her pocket, waiting for that just in case moment that will be another one of her truly historic deeds. "Considering what happened to the last big payment we sent you."

Jane and Darcy look at each other mutinously. What they did with that money was _epic_. Darcy has Iron Man secreted away upstairs, for when MMOs, Steam and Netflix come back into her life. She's positive Jane still has hers somewhere too: Jane and World of Warcraft have never been parted for too long. This is her third attempt at going cold turkey, something Darcy doesn't expect will last all that long. 

"It can't be worse than what Tony does with his money," Maria points out, and that's right about when things start to get really confusing. The Iron Man suit appears from somewhere, Steve's shield appears from somewhere else, and every female who's not Jane or Darcy is suddenly in possession of at least three firearms.

Even the aliens have a tough time calming them all down, and since they managed to take over the planet in less than a day Darcy has to give everyone props for that. She also, grudgingly, has to give the aliens credit for not stabbing the lot of them when they all refused to eat their dinners because they didn't conform to whatever ridiculous dietary restrictions they'd invented today.

"We should all swap tomorrow," Darcy mutters; Loki looks intrigued at the idea. She flat out refuses to be worried about that. 

"We want to show you this," a Bysrah wearing a really silly hat asks. Darcy raises her eyebrows at Tony, who looks actually innocent, as opposed to his patented brand of faking it. 

_This_ turns out to be a video of the sort of blatantly biased propaganda type that Darcy hasn't seen since her high school Junior year's mandatory sex-ed class. 

"Poor Susie," Darcy mutters as the brightly colourful alien symbol flickers on to the screen for the third time. "Now she'll never fulfil her dream of one day becoming a secretary."

"You saw that one too?" Clint snorts, choking back his laughter. "I thought I was the only one subjected to that crap."

Darcy shakes her head with a grin. She'd successfully stolen the school's copy when she graduated, both to save future generations from having to see that shit, and to have something entertaining to pull out during drunken games of show and tell. It was either that or her boobs, teenage Darcy had figured, and all in all she's fairly content with her choice. 

Unfortunately, and admitting this hurts Darcy in every part of her that's still human, the multimedia presentation is amazingly impressive. The sheer amount of medical, scientific and societal progress that has been made in a few short weeks is freaking _magical_. They've cured _AIDS_ , the medicine is being shipped out to every country, free of charge, and Darcy tears up at the implications.

They've also just made gay marriage legal. It's such a beautiful moment that Darcy wants to slap someone massively hard. 

There's silence when the presentation ends. None of the Avengers are willing to look at each other. Jane is outright crying when she finds that a good half of the Bysrah's intergalactic travel technology is based in the same sought of science that she's been doggedly pursuing her entire adult life. 

"Does anyone have questions about what you've just seen?" An alien asks. Darcy can't bear it, she can't stand here and _watch_ this anymore, being so confused about everything. She doesn't say a word as she gets up and winds her way through the hallways of one of the greatest symbols of her country. 

She doesn't say a word as she finds an empty room, one so far out of the way that she doubts anyone would bother looking this far for her.

And she doesn't make a noise as she buries her head in her hands, closes her eyes and silently sobs.

***

Darcy doesn't wake up, as that would imply she'd managed to fall asleep. It's more that she snaps to awareness as a large, warm bulk settles beside her. It's Thor. There isn't much difference between Super Soldier muscle and Norse God muscle when it's pressed to her side. The only way she can tell, without looking, is that Thor's hair tickles her mostly bare shoulder when he leans down to comfort her.

"Do you wish to speak on it?" Thor asks her. Darcy shakes her head, her hands clutching her legs tightly to her chest. "I understand this is difficult…"

Darcy laughs. She doesn't mean to be cruel. Heck knows Thor's pretty damn smart when he's not trying to appear like an adorable idiot, she just doesn't think he can understand what it's like to lose everything you know in a second, and then have it shoved in your face that the people stealing it away from her might actually be right about the whole thing.

"How do you guys fix stuff like disease?" Darcy asks when the silence drags on. "Or…or bad injuries, or…anything."

"We don't have much disease," Thor says, admitting it like it's a disappointment, like there's something to be gained in humanity's fragile mortality. "We have healing stones for some injuries; I know not how they work, I never undertook a healer's training. They do not always work, and they are a temporary measure: if a warrior is badly injured they must still seek proper attention."

"Great," Darcy says, and at some point, without realising it, she's become hysterical. "Is that the only way you get hurt? War?"

"And training for it," Thor says quietly. Darcy's glad he's ashamed, he _should_ be, for coming from a race that claims they're protecting earth and then hides all the best technology away from them. And for coming from a race that got to choose to put themselves in the only situations that would mean they could get hurt at all. "I'm sorry, Darcy."

"Don't," Darcy hisses, wiping furiously at the tears gathering in her eyes. "You don't understand. You don't get what it's like, to have to worry about all these things, and now…they can all go away. Almost everything we're afraid of can just be gone, and all we need to do is give up…give up our freedom."

She's crying again by the time she's done. Thor wraps his arm around her shoulder, pulls her half way onto his lap. Damnit, he gives _great_ hugs. She actually feels better when the tears run out, but the confusion doesn't vanish at all.

"Are we doing the right thing?" She asks, mostly to herself. She doesn't think that there are any answers, and if there are they sure as hell aren't going to be easy ones. 

"I can't answer that," Thor says. Darcy pretends she's not still angry at him and snuggles into his enormous warmth, seeking the comfort that comes from being hidden away from the rest of the world. "I suppose it depends on what you value most: freedom from tyranny or freedom from fear."

"Huh," Darcy says, and she's laughing. How did that happen? "That…actually makes things a bit easier."

"This will make it more so," Loki says from the doorway, a small, enigmatic smile on his face. "Come. The Iron Asshole has something you should likely see."

Darcy lets Thor pull her to her feet. She stumbles a little, but a gigantic god at her back is great for keeping her balance.

"If I find out you were spying on Sisterhood meetings," Darcy tells Loki shakily. "I will forcibly induct you into the club by _making you a woman_."

"You're welcome to try," Loki says dismissively.

"Natasha will help me," Darcy threatens. Loki pauses, blanching just a little.

"I did not spy on your secret girls club," he says and Darcy smiles.

"Better not have."

What Tony wants her to see is another video, assembled quietly while Darcy and Jane were planning their afternoon distractions. Darcy hadn't been aware that she'd been causing a distraction. She mentally pats herself on the back for the re-emerging psychic powers, coming back into her life just when she'd thought them gone forever. 

It's not quite as cheerful as the one she'd seen an hour ago. This one is a long line of people, the familiar mixture of terror, despair and surrender that Darcy's seen in her own eyes far too often. There must be a hundred of them, passing through a short checkpoint of Bysrah. They barely pause when they do, answering a question or two then being separated into two distinct lines.

"What are they doing?" Jane whispers, clutching for Thor as soon as he comes in range. Darcy rolls her eyes at her and Jane shrugs helplessly, more terrified than Darcy's seen her in a long time.

"Trials," Steve says shortly. He's furious, pacing the room so quickly that he almost bounces off the walls rather than turning at them. Tony occasionally steps into his path, slowing him down with a soft touch to the back or chest. Darcy's glad Pepper's not here to witness it. She might have been the first of them to start dating again, but it's always a bitch seeing your ex back on the path to happiness. 

"But…they're barely getting a chance to speak," Darcy blurts out. She's on the receiving end of five separate pointedly condescending glares. Darcy refuses to feel bad about it. 

"That's really the point there, Darce," Tony says. Yeah, Darcy's gotten that bit already, _thanks, Tony_.

"Shit," Darcy says, wishing this made things clearer. Every time her mind screams freedom, her heart screams tiny, sick babies, and she hates that she's conflicted at all about this.

"One day we'll cure all this," Bruce says. His voice is tight, but he's his usual scientist-pale, and she can't see any green hiding out just under his skin. He doesn't look at the screen, which Darcy thinks is probably a good move. Whatever good they do here would probably lose more than a few brownie points if they find out the Hulk trashed what was left of the American democratic system during a tantrum.

"We can't force them into democracy," Steve says, like he's trying to convince himself, and fighting really hard to stick to what he's decided. 

"So that's it?" Natasha hedges, rubbing her arm. Darcy can't see any visible injury; she guesses it's more like that ankle she broke when she was five, the one that still aches when the weather is bad, she has to run too far, or she's trying to get out of gym class. Scars remain long after the wound is healed. "We give up everything we can learn from them, based on principle?"

"It's a pretty big damned principle," Tony snaps. Steve has been angered into incoherence, and Darcy ducks behind a decidedly ugly statue in case that shield ends up flying around the room like a scarily deadly boomerang. "I get it. Pragmatic Russian. Morally ambiguous. Great. Still my country, toots, and I'm fighting this."

"Don't start with me, Stark," Natasha hisses through her teeth. She's fingering her gun. Darcy's still not sure how they managed to sneak weaponry in here with all the scanning and anti-weapon guards they have stationed everywhere. 

"Ah, I believe I know this one," Loki says. Darcy's not a fighter, but she's tensing herself to tackle him just so he'll shut up before he makes things worse. "Regimes fall every day, do they not Agent Romanov?"

"So do people," she says, giving Loki a hard look. "Even gods."

"Enough," Steve says. It's not a roar; it's barely a whisper, but there's so much unexpected malice in it that everyone actually falls silent, a miracle that Darcy never thought she'd live to see. "We're not going to fight about this."

He points at the screen. Even Darcy can tell the difference between those who have been declared innocent and those that haven't. It's so hard to see the miserable fear on the people they're going to execute, but she makes herself look because she doubts that all that many people would, and she thinks that anyone with the courage to go up against something like this deserves to have their faces remembered.

"Those people are going to die, because they wanted to stand up and fight for their country," Steve says formally, like he's making the speech in Independence Day and expecting to save the world. Darcy wants to giggle, wants to see Tony rolling his eyes and doing the same thing, but he's hanging on to every word Steve says like they're the only thing left that makes sense. "They don't deserve that. They deserve much, much more than that. I can see how this choice might be difficult. I understand that what they're offering is enticing. But this is the moment that you need to choose. If you can't do it, then you should walk out now, and none of us will blame you."

Tony draws in a deep breath. Darcy doesn't want to know what sort of Tony-ism he's going to come out with. Steve quells him with one of his patented Captain America glares and he actually shuts up. That might be the biggest marvel that comes out of all of this. 

"If you want to stay, stay," Steve says shortly, apparently deciding to give as few chances for interruption as he can. "If you want to go, go. Simple. But decide now, because we're going to ramp this up _now_."

Everyone looks at Natasha; she's fidgeting, looking at the door and sighing, but when the silence becomes heavy she looks up at Steve and nods her head once. They look at Darcy next, like she's the weak link in this, or even a remotely important one.

"I'm staying," she says, because really, all the medical advances in the world can't make up for the prospect of saying the wrong thing one day and having her head chopped off, or whatever it was the aliens were doing these days. "I just…"

"Just?" Steve prompts insistently.

"Just," Darcy says. She's not going to crack, but that doesn’t mean she can't be trying to cook up a few of her own plans along the way. "What am I doing? Hit me, Cap'n."

Steve's expression softens, and he ruffles her hair like she's a kid again. It feels nice. The desire to hit him passes quickly. 

"You caused an awfully good distraction this afternoon," he says leadingly. It takes Darcy a moment to get it, and she groans when she does.

"You're kidding me, right?" She moans through a sigh. "No, it's fine, I get it. League of Superheroes and I get to be the boob flashing, people tasing, prank causing nutjob who'll be called 'eccentric' in the history books."

"You flashed someone?" Clint asks. Darcy glares at him; she's been there, done that, and if he hasn't been keeping up with current events then he doesn't get to see the pictures that are somehow surfacing on what little parts of the internet are steadily up and working. 

"Shut up, Archer Dude," Darcy mutters, crossing her arms over the chest in case her pyjamas have gotten all see-through again. "Who's on my team? 'Cause I ain't doing this all by myself."

"The…what do you call it?" Fury asks, his one eye twinkling in a way that is, frankly, disturbing. "Sisterhood of Better Superheroes?"

"Pepper's coming?" Jane asks happily. Jane is the one person Darcy's met that loves Pepper as much as she does. (Excluding Mr. Secret Agent Man and his conflicting set of genitalia). 

"Yes, Ms. Potts is coming," Fury confirms. Jane and Darcy exchange squeals of excitement. Maria looks a little disappointed until Jane hugs her and whispers something in her ear that makes her smile brightly.

"What are you guys doing?" Darcy asks, suddenly suspicious. "If you get to do all the fun stuff while we're off being 'distracting'-"

"We're working on destabilizing a regime," Fury says. "If you know something about that…"

He sounds sceptical. Darcy raises her eyebrows in the best imitation of him she can manage and makes her voice that special version of superiority that the people in this room have depressingly perfected. 

"I'm a poli-sci student, working with a former Russian spy," Darcy says haughtily. "I know plenty about the destabilization of regimes."

"Do you want to be involved in one?" Natasha asks her bluntly. Darcy tilts her head as she considers, the unravelling knot of her dark hair spilling across her face.

"No, not really," she says quietly, because damnit, she was meant to be over being this afraid.

"Good. Then we get started at dawn," Fury announces. Darcy's not the only one who groans and petitions for a lunch time revolution. Ten A.M isn't the best compromise, but Tony's complaints aside, she'll take it.

***

Because life is fair that way, Darcy wakes up early anyway. The sun is only just starting to stream through her window, not quite at the point of pricking her eyes. She's not sure whose room she's in, but the childish part of her hopes that it's the one that JFK nailed Marilyn Monroe in, because how cool would that be? Especially if that sort of sexual charisma was contagious and she ends up catching the ability to nail whichever hot guys she wants.

She's too restless to go back to sleep, so Darcy decides to try and hunt down Jane and see if she can haul her outside for early morning yoga/sun worshipping/dishing on what it's actually like to be sleeping with a Norse God and whether Mjolnir really is a good metaphor for his penis.

The part of her that’s petty and jealous hopes he's built like tube of lipstick. The bigger part, the one that's actually coming to like Thor in all of his breaking her best friend's heart glory, doesn't want to pray too hard, just in case he can make that sort of thing come true.

She might have to try that on Loki the next time he pisses her off, and she's drunk enough to lose her survival instinct. 

There's a faint thudding as she approaches the floor she'd thought she'd last seen Jane heading towards. She's not sure how many bedrooms there are in this place, had never paid that much attention to random historical facts, but they're all squished in there somewhere. Her best guess is that Tony's got his music playing loud enough to wake the dead and half the Bysrah, but when she gets closer to the room she hears something so horrifying she's 98% sure she'll never recover from it.

"Oh god, _yes_ , Thor, just there," Jane moans. Darcy throws up a little in her mouth, because seriously? Calling your boyfriend a god in bed isn't cool, even, no especially, when he technically is one. She backs away from the door before she can hear more of it, and walks fast enough down the hallway that she should technically consider it running.

She hears Steve's voice, muffled through one of the doors she passes, and she's grabbed it open to complain before she sees:

Steve, dishevelled, flushed, pants half way down his hips.

Tony, grinning, his hands down Steve's pants.

Herself, slamming the door shut so that they'll _know_ someone was there, catching whatever it was that they're doing. Like Darcy doesn't know exactly what they were doing. 

She goes outside, the only place she can think of that isn't going to have people fornicating like bunnies. Darcy hates this feeling, the being on the outside, giving her best grin like she doesn't care that she's lonely. Most of the time she doesn't. She can hide it, or distract herself with friends, studies and more alcohol than she should technically be consuming. Today it hits her hard, right in the gut: a conviction that she will always, always be alone.

She finds Bruce, his head tilted to the sun in a yoga pose that makes her stomping around like a graceless elephant even more obvious. She collapses to the ground beside him, lying down and watching the endlessly blue sky, waiting for clouds that she can squint at and pretend are hilariously obscene images.

"You okay?" Bruce asks, his breath far too steady for someone who's just done that kind of workout. 

"I'm the only person here not getting laid," Darcy says, crossing her legs; she may as well get used to the feeling, it's not about to change any time soon.

"Not the only one," Bruce reminds her. He nudges her gently, hesitantly, as though Bruce Banner can crush her as easily as the Hulk. "Fairly sure I'm in the same club."

"We should make it official," Darcy muses. She smiles at him, because Bruce is awesome, and she's fairly sure that if he wanted any kind of female company he'd have to be fighting them off with a stick. Sure, women can be confusing sometimes, but anyone who didn't go for the adorably ruffled geeky scientist just doesn't make sense to Darcy. "The Avengers celibacy club?"

"You're an Avenger now?" He asks, but there's no bite in his voice.

"An honorary one," Darcy agrees. "Tony had a ceremony and everything. I got a tiara. I'm too afraid to wear it, just in case it's made of real diamonds."

"That's…probably a good call," Bruce says with a bit of a wince. "He bought me a car a while back, when I said that I liked to have a quick getaway planned."

"Let me guess," Darcy ponders, tapping her chin in thought. "The bat mobile?"

"James Bond's Aston Martin," Bruce says drolly. It feels nice to laugh with someone in a way that's not directed at her. Darcy looks at him through her lashes, giving him her best puppy dog look.

"I'll trade you for the tiara," she offers.

"Deal," Bruce says, his eyes twinkling in a way that's much nicer than when he's losing a battle to 'the other guy'. "I've always thought I was a diamonds kinda fella."

"Fella?" Darcy asks, her small smile involuntarily widening into a grin. "You've been spending time with Steve, haven't you?"

"A bit too much," Bruce acknowledges. She reaches out and ruffles Bruce's hair, just because she can and because when it all sticks up like that he's the cutest thing she's seen in weeks. "Stop that."

"What, Hulk doesn't like it?" Darcy teases. 

"I just get…uncomfortable when people touch me," Bruce says.

That right there just breaks Darcy's heart. Uncomfortable or not she leans over and hugs him. She wonders how long it's been since someone has. Too long, she guesses, because after a pause he wraps his arms around her in return, and they both tumble to the ground because somehow they've forgotten that one of them needs to be keeping them upright.

"Oops," Darcy says sheepishly. "Not quite the plan there."

"There was a plan?" Bruce sounds sceptical. What's up with people doing that lately?

"There was," Darcy sniffs, sticking her tongue out. "But I don't share them with unbelievers."

"I'm sorry Ms. Lewis," he says. He looks like he can't quite believe that he's doing it, but he picks up her hand and raises it to his lips, kissing her gently. It's been so long since a man's done that, touched her in a way that could be considered non-platonic, that the warmth spreads straight to between her thighs, and there it is: her entirely inappropriate crush.

"I'll forgive you," Darcy agrees.

He has the nicest smile; warm and beautiful, and reaching right up to his eyes. Darcy's loves this part of crushes; the time when she's noticing everything new about someone, and nothing they do could ever bother her. Thankfully she's also not stupid enough to actually _voice_ these things. She can't imagine anything that would spook him away quicker.

"Why are you out here, anyway?" He asks, taking in her barely there pyjamas and the goose bumps that are rising on her skin.

"Everyone's getting laid but me," she reminds him. His raised eyebrow invites her to continue and Darcy sighs, rolling her eyes. "I went to get Jane up for an early breakfast and heard more than I ever wanted to know about her and Thor. Then I heard Steve, and ended up finding out more than I ever wanted to know about him and Tony. So I came out here, because seriously? If anyone's schtupping out here on the lawn, they deserve to get caught."

He laughs, and this time it's at her. Darcy huffs and he nudges her with his elbow again, all playful and so un-Bruce like that she has to check his head for weird alien eggs, or tentacles, or whatever appendages these guys use. 

"Schtupping?" 

"It's a perfectly valid word," Darcy says primly. The sun is finally peaking over the horizon and she has to raise her hand to shield her eyes from the light. She's never been much of a sunrise/sunset person; scenery itself doesn't do much for her unless it's got all sorts of great memories attached. The football field at her high school is still one of her favourite places in the world. She hopes, with a familiarly sinking stomach, that at least part of it is still there. "It's the scientific term."

"That explains why I don't know it," he says. It's a lame joke, but Darcy's so pleased he's making them that she's willing to forgive just about anything that doesn't involve people walking into bars. "Seriously. Are you okay?"

His big brown eyes are more probing than anything the aliens could do to her rear.

"I'm holding on," she says with a wobbly smile. "That's something, right?"

"That's everything," Bruce promises. She can tell it's nearly killing him, all this touching, but he gives her another quick hug and terrible crush aside, he's pretty damned good at it. When she gets back up to wander inside and leave him to the rest of his meditation, she doesn't feel quite so alone. It's a feeling she likes.

***

"Am I the only one who's nearly walked in on Jane and Thor today?" Maria asks when she joins Darcy for what can only be termed brunch.

"Nope," Darcy says, offering her the huge bowl of beautifully ripe fruit. 

She's not quite sure whether beta-carotene would be in fruit, but since there's no one there watching she's willing to scarf down as much as she can without being caught. Maria examines the bowl carefully, picks out a piece of apple and a piece of banana and shoots her a wicked grin as she slowly eats.

"Am I the only one who actually has walked in on Steve and Tony?" Darcy continues. She's almost full, but the pancakes look amazing and who cares if she gains a few pounds while she's here? There's still that gym idea, and if she's lucky she'll get in a few more desperate sprints to burn some calories before she's done. 

"No," Fury and Coulson say. They've come in together, Coulson's eye twitching and Fury looking faintly disgusted. 

"I bet they still think it's a secret," Maria says with a snort. Darcy winces a bit at all the things she's done lately that she'd very much like S.H.I.E.L.D not to know about. She catches Maria's eye, gives her a significant look, and jerks her head towards the lawn. 

Maria smiles, small and secretive, widening her eyes in the universal gesture of innocence. Darcy would hug her if it wouldn't mean a dive across the table that would look even more suspicious than the faces she was making. 

"So what's the plan today, Boss?" Darcy says through a mouthful of syrupy pancake goodness. "Unscrewing the tops of all the salt shakers? Shaking up all the soda cans in the fridge? Please tell me it's gladwrap on the toilet, because I've been jonesing to do that one for ages."

"Not quite," Maria says. Darcy's a little disappointed at that. "Actually, I think Loki's got the next one."

"I'm beginning to think that he's just got gender identity issues," Darcy makes a face. "He knows way too much about the Sisterhood, he's taking our distraction slot and have you read some of the myths? Anyone who gives birth that many times obviously has something going on."

"My brother has not given birth," Thor says, perplexed. There are so many people walking in and out of this place that Darcy can't keep track of who's meant to be where anymore. She needs to stop talking about people behind their back. They always find out anyway, and it's much more fun just to say it to their faces and watch their reactions.

"Then Thor, my friend," Darcy says. She's so excited about this plan that she bounces in her seat. "I have some books he really needs to read."

"I was planning to do that," Jane says. Of course she's turning up wherever Thor is. Darcy pouts at her, the _you're not dumping me for THAT, are you? I don't care how cute he is_ glare. Jane frowns and lets go of the gigantic, muscled hand (how can _hands_ be muscles anyway?), crawling on to the same chair that Darcy's curled up on. 

Darcy shifts, letting Jane's familiar perfume soothe away some of the irritation that's been eating at her. Jane takes her hand under the table, squeezing it softly, and Darcy drops her head on Jane's shoulder with a soft snuffle.

"I've missed you," she whispers. Jane makes a soft noise in her ear.

"I'm sorry. Want me to ditch him today so we can go have fun?" Jane asks. Darcy thinks about it for a moment, looking at Thor who's still watching Jane like she's the best thing in the world.

"Yes please," Darcy says. Jane nods against her ear. 

"Done."

Darcy's not the only one who looks a little relieved when Thor's released for the day. Darcy doesn't really know Loki enough to be able to tell, and he _is_ meant to be the God of Lies, but there's a mean pleasure in there somewhere that makes Darcy think that he's been missing his brother more than he would ever admit, and doesn't much like himself for it.

Crap. The last thing she needs is something in common with the God of Batshit Crazy.

Loki looks at her as though he knows exactly what she's thinking, and he's going to kill her for it. Just for fun she directs a loud _I hate you, and I pray that your pubic hair turns green_ prayer in his direction. 

She'll never get confirmation of it, but the expression of discomfort he gets after the initial *zing* will convince her forever that the power of prayer is absolutely the best thing ever. 

"Where are we watching the latest screwball comedy Loki's invented from?" Natasha asks, stabbing her breakfast fruit with a letter opener.

"Uh…" Jane turns her grunt into a question. Natasha does something with her mouth that Darcy thinks is meant to be a pout, and the men in the room turn a little pale.

"They confiscated my knives," she says unhappily.

"I was wondering about that," Darcy exclaims. "What about those guns you had last night? The ones you were about to shoot Tony with?"

"Water pistols," Maria says. Darcy and Jane don't laugh, they really don't, but the unladylike snivels they make instead tell enough of a story. "Shut up."

"Sorry," Darcy and Jane mutter, but her boss gives her one of the mischievous smiles that originally convinced Darcy that mad-scientists were exactly her type of employer. 

"Any of Stark's television devices should suffice," Loki sniffs, saying _television_ with a level of derision Darcy hasn't heard since her high school guidance counsellor told her what really happened to people who were caught making out with their boyfriend in the aforementioned counsellor's office. 

Totally not her fault. Shrinks shouldn't have couches if they didn't want to catch people on them.

"Pretend to be a little excited, why don't you?" Jane mutters. Darcy assumes that whatever truce was in place is officially off. 

"Killing him didn't work?" Darcy whispers so only Jane can hear. 

"Freaking immortality," Jane murmurs back. "He turned me into a cat."

"You got better?" Darcy offers with a smug smile. Jane hits her, but it's affectionate, so neither of them get too worked up. She can't quite say the same when Jane eats half of what's left on the table and takes a solid ten minutes to detach her lips from Thor and say goodbye, but she comes eventually and that, Darcy tells herself firmly, is the important part.

Jane's the one who gets the idea to search the White House for hidden files. Darcy argues that if there is proof of Area 51 they're not going to hide it here. If they were that stupid the aliens would no doubt have gotten rid of anything that might implicate them already. 

"How long do you think it'll be?" Darcy asks, fingering the mini-TV Tony had given her. She has no idea how he's still producing these masterpieces while they're all stuck in a building that's most definitely not set up for it, but she's learned better than to ask questions like that of Tony. If she gives him even the smallest opening he'll come up with something crazier, and Darcy doesn't particularly want to see what beats the whole t-rex thing. 

Jane is rifling through a set of files she'd found in the oval office with a fervency that's bordering on obsession. Darcy is meant to be the lookout, but she's doing a terrible job of it. Most of her attention is concentrated on the foreign policy memos that Jane is discarding without looking at them. The woman's priorities are way out of whack. 

"No idea," Jane says distractedly. "This is ridiculous. Who cares about-"

"If you say anything that puts down my area of expertise," Darcy says sweetly. "I will personally change the backgrounds on all of your computers to George Bush photoshopped on a naked dude."

"Wow, this is so interesting," Jane says. It's not convincing, but hell, she's trying, and that's something. Jane wrinkles her nose and shoves the papers at her. "Just take them."

Darcy beams happily and settles down with her newfound knowledge. She's really not supposed to, but most of this stuff is just too good, so if a few of the sheets of paper end up shoved down her bra she's totally blameless. This stuff will _kill_ in her thesis; she might even be able to cruise into a doctorate on it, and Dr. Darcy could become an actual reality. 

"Anything?" Darcy asks as the mini-TV flickers to life. "Damn. I hate Loki's stuff."

"It's more Batman Begins than Star Trek XI," Jane agrees. It takes a moment for Darcy to parse that one.

"More darkness, less adventure?" She guesses. Jane nods. 

It's not Loki on the screen. Darcy's best guess is that it's the same illusion he used when they blew up Tony's building, but it's so hard to be sure when she can't examine, poke or irritate him into revealing something he didn't plan on. He looks solemn, and if it is Loki he's finally gotten the movements down perfectly.

"I have become aware of some mistakes that have been made," the alien says solemnly. "I cannot condone this behaviour any longer; it is far too much for my conscience."

"How far do you think this is going out?" Darcy asks. She's not the biggest fan of being in the same house as the people that they're about to troll, especially not since civil disobedience has become capital punishment worthy.

"Dunno," Jane says softly. She's got her game smile on, the one that says that she's nowhere near confident in what she's saying, but there's no way she's backing down now. "But Tony's been on the communications thing since the beginning and they haven't failed yet."

"Oh my God, you've jinxed us," Darcy groans. "We're all going to die now, and if there really is an afterlife, I'm spending the rest of eternity haunting you."

"You're going to be busy," Jane sniffs. "You threaten everyone with that."

"I have forever," Darcy says. "There's plenty of time to give everyone their just desserts."

"There are many things we have done for you, it is true," Loki continues. He's chattering and fluttering his arms about. Even his natural grace can't make that look good. "I am proud of the diseases we have cured, and the lives we have saved. I am glad that wars have been stopped, and that we have removed the weapons that allowed you to destroy each other from a distance, without having to look the individual you are attacking in the eye."

The chattering becomes louder. Darcy realises that most of it isn't coming from the mini-TV. She pokes Jane and her boss turns the volume down just in time for it to be missed by the long line of Bysrah running in various directions down the hallway and outside the windows. This thing was clearly invented by Tony; as soon as they lose the ability to hear it subtitles pop up. 

"He looks even more pompous in writing," Jane says. Darcy pats her back reassuringly. At this point she's not sure who Thor would chose if he was forced to pick, but Darcy doesn't hold out much hope for Jane. 

"You're smart enough not to do that whole ultimatum thing, right?" Darcy asks, just in case.

"Of course," Jane says, waving her away. "He's annoying, not a deal breaker. Besides, it's just a thing right now, not a _thing_ , you know?"

"Yeah, I get that," Darcy agrees. "You're just looking kind of serious, you know?"

"Close quarters, great sex, and let's face it," Jane says apologetically. "Most of it wasn't really his fault. It was easy to blame him when I didn't know, but saving the world is more important than dropping in on the girl you only knew for a couple of days."

"Stop being all reasonable," Darcy says. She's grumpier than she wants to be, but this is making a total waste of all the months she spent comforting Jane.

"Thank you," Jane says. Psychicness is popping up everywhere. "I needed it then."

"Then?" Darcy asks. There's something worrying behind Jane's words. 

"And later," Jane says. The glumness isn't great. "He'll have to go back at some point."

"Yeah," Darcy says, and why they're discussing Jane's maybe-boyfriend when his brother is trying his best to get them all killed isn't high on the list of the smartest things they've ever done. "Uh…I have the feeling we missed something important there."

"Blah blah blah, technological advances, blah blah blah capital punishment," Jane recites.

"I hate your ability to multitask," Darcy sighs. She turns her attention back to the TV so that she doesn't have to play catch up again later. 

On the screen Loki-Bysrah bows his head and pauses in his speech. He looks up at the camera and Darcy leans closer, trying to decipher whether the glint of green she saw in his eyes was the real thing or just a trick of the light.

"He's losing it a bit," Jane says, worrying on her lower lip. Darcy snuggles closer. Together they watch what looks like the beautifully slow collapse of a Bysrah's confidence in his race.

"It is because of all these reasons," Loki says, his argument cribbed from everything Tony and Steve have been saying since she followed them to Malibu. "That I have decided I can no longer support my fellow Bysrah in the control of this planet. I am making myself available to humanity as their comrade and confidant, should they find me at all useful."

The broadcast flickers off. Jane and Darcy stare at the blank screen equally as blankly. 

"Did he just defect?" Darcy asks.

"I…think so?" Jane says dubiously.

The television flickers back on. The eye roll from the alien isn't quite what Darcy's come to expect from the Bysrah, but she doubts that most people have been studying them as intensely as she has.

"In case that was not clear," Loki says. "I'm defecting to humanity."

"There you go," Darcy says when the screen is black again. "Who do you think they'll blame for that?"

***

They blame everyone. At least that's how Darcy feels when she's hauled into a late night meeting by a group of pissed off eyesores and lectured for over an hour. Everyone from S.H.I.E.L.D manages to look bored. Clint might even have fallen asleep, his head buried so close to Natasha's cleavage that he could actually have been killed for it, and is slumped against her until she can properly dispose of the body.

"Does anyone have anything they want to say?" The Bysrah with the weird hat addresses them. Darcy hasn't been lectured like this since her parents, and she hated it then, too.

"You have my deepest apologies," Loki says. There are actual tears in his eyes, and he's holding a dark green handkerchief that doesn't quite manage to hide the wet spots from where he has raised it to his face. "That was an accident. We made the video when we were still your enemies, and we realised immediately how inappropriate it was. I thought I was deleting it on my computer today, but I'm still a novice at Midgardian technologies; I think I must have hit send, instead, and now people have seen it. I'm so ashamed of myself."

"I've done the same thing," Bruce says, clearing his throat. Clint is not dead, if his stiff jaw is any indication, but he doesn't move and Loki stays alive for yet another lie. "There was this girl, and…I shouldn't be allowed to operate electronic devices. I'm just hopeless at it."

"Everyone's done it," Tony commiserates. If he's made a single mistake with technology that didn't involve a half-intentional explosion, Darcy's taking off her dirty shoes and eating them while dancing to old-school Britney Spears. "You should see some of the stuff I've sent Pepper. I should have gotten hit by a sexual harassment lawsuit."

Last Darcy had heard Stark was up to his eleventh sexual harassment lawsuit. She flickers ten fingers at him, then one. He flicks one back in return, but it's not the one that Darcy had sent him and that's just rude. 

"I don’t think I should have to be here." She says, standing up and drawing in deep breaths. It doesn't help her blood pressure, but inevitably she'll have more of the happy tabs forced on her when one of the aliens discovers how worked up she is, so she can fake courage until then. "I didn't do it, I don't know who did do it, and also you're not my parents so I don't have to listen to you."

The full force of seven alien glares descends on her. Right, not the smartest move she's made, but at this point smart is so far behind her that she was probably potty trained more recently than she's seen it. 

"Your parents are not relevant to this discussion," one of the garish annoyances tells her sternly. Darcy steels her shoulders, stands as straight as she can and prays that she won't faint. Thor and Loki do the jumping thing and yeah, it's hysterical, but she needs to stop doing it accidentally and leave it for purposeful pranks at exactly the wrong moment. 

"I beg to differ," Fury says. Darcy furrows her brow at him, and he gives her a serene look that should not be possible on a one-eyed badass.

"Why is that, human?"

"Because I am her father," he says, his voice so James Earl Jones that they all crack up just a little. Darcy widens her eyes, flutters her eyelashes and, through entirely inappropriate giggles, gives Fury a hug.

"Thank you, Daddy," she says gravely. "I'm sorry if I've disappointed you."

"You're a terrible disappointment," Fury said, all the sadness of a wronged parent in his voice. "I just don't know what I'll do to, sorry, dear, with you."

Darcy hides her grin behind her hair. Tony is laughing so hard that only Steve's tight grip is holding him upwards, and Jane has crawled entirely on to Thor's lap, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

"I apologise for my daughter's behaviour," Fury says. A group of the aliens are in the corner. Darcy can hear them muttering something about genetics, adoption and whether they really wanted to get involved in whatever familiar mess Darcy and Fury are clearly made of.

There's a long argument about it. As far as Darcy can tell the vote is close enough that they're almost in real trouble, but eventually the more skittish one seems to win on some sort of technicality.

"Go," one of the aliens says, gesturing to all of them. "We will talk when you can be reasonable. You will be reasonable soon."

"Sir, yes, Sir," Steve says, standing at salute. It's not as effective as it could be, what with his normal saluting arm being used to hold Tony upright, but he looks patriotic and sincere, and if he can fake that so well, _how many of his interactions with Darcy have been filthy lies?_

"Traitor," she tells him as she follows him out of the room. He frowns, uses his spare hand to pat her cheek softly and sighs.

"I hate lying," he says. That's fair; Darcy hates people knowing what she's talking about before she gets a chance to explain, but that's happening so often around here she's beginning to think that she was the only person on the planet born without telepathy, which is the third unfairest thing she's heard today.

The first and second occur when she hears Clint screaming about his eyes burning and Pepper, finally arrived and been much fawned over, hears Jane and Thor going at it _again_.

"You'll get used to it," Darcy sighs when the members of the Sisterhood who are not betraying them all meet for late night coffee. "Gods and Super Soldiers: amazing refractory periods."

"It's just not fair," Maria says blearily into her cappuccino. "It's almost enough to make you consider Loki."

"Hey, tall dark and crazy can be attractive," Natasha muses. They all look at her, and she shrugs her shoulders delicately. "I'm not saying I find it that way, but if you're that desperate, he's an option."

They all consider that for a moment. The shudder they share isn't scripted, but it may as well have been for how perfectly they pull it off.

"It's such a waste," Darcy whines. "You know he's just going to turn around and try and kill us all again when this is all over."

"Thor better have a plan for that," Maria agrees. "Otherwise he's going to find the handle of that damned hammer somewhere he really doesn't want it."

"People would pay to see that," Pepper says. "Don't look at me like that. I work with Tony. Just about anything can be a money making opportunity."

"Note to self:," Darcy says without thinking. "Don’t let Pepper see any of my sex tapes."

The amount of time it takes to try and explain that away is not her best three hours ever, but it's not a Bysrah lecture and it means that all relevant fornicating couples are finally done when she wanders in the direction of her bedroom. Or she thinks they are, anyway. She's proven wrong at 3am when thumping comes from two completely separate directions.

Putting her pillow over her head, Darcy makes an early New Years resolution:

When this is all over she's finishing grad school, moving where no one knows her and staying the hell away from superheroes. Even the ones that are fluffy and doctor-like; cuteness does not make up for this shit.

***

Darcy wakes to snippets of conversation that don't make much sense to her. She's memorised most countries' capital cities, and a whole bunch of states and territories. They make great bar bets, and she's won more than a few pub trivia contests with it. What she's not sure of is why they're being mentioned with numbers, discussions of war history and infiltrating her dreams.

When someone mentions Paris, still her ultimate holiday destination, Darcy pulls herself out of the last dregs of sleep and props herself on her elbow.

"What are you all doing in my bedroom?" Darcy asks fuzzily. Natasha is perched on the end of her bed, the letter opener twirling around her fingers. Steve and Tony are on opposite ends of the room trying not to look at each other. She wished they would pass that on to Jane and Thor whose googly eyes are reaching care bear proportions. 

"You're the last one awake," Tony says cheerfully. "You get the best wakeup call?"

"This is the best?" Darcy asks, pulling herself upright. Thank god she decided against sleeping naked last night. Her luck's got to be changing. "Wait. Where's Loki."

Thor and Steve exchange one of those heavy glances that Darcy's never been that great at deciphering. Darcy gives them her best 'big girl' glare and Thor is the one who cracks first, sighing heavily.

"The Bysrah wish to talk to him about his mistake," he says softly. Darcy pales, because yeah, the guy's a dick and she doesn't think that anyone's ever going to really forgive him for New York, but he's on their side and so far he's come up with some of their best strategies. 

"Just talk," Natasha reassures her, crawling up the bed and hugging Darcy as gently as Natasha knows how. "Fury and Maria are keeping their eyes on it, and Tony's got a new camera that they still haven't worked out."

"How are you _doing_ all this?" Darcy wails, louder than she'd intended. Clint winces. Darcy mouths a _sorry_ at him. Steve mimes taking deep breaths and Darcy imitates him until her chest stops constricting. "Sorry. But seriously Tony, what the fuck?"

"Figured out most of them before I came in," he says with a wry smile. "I've got about fifty seven random prototypes, I just deploy whichever one is least like what they've already deciphered."

"Why do they let you keep doing it?" Jane asks, her fingers intertwined with Thor's gigantic ones. 

"At this point, losing any of us would cause them more problems than the damage we're causing," Steve sighs, but Darcy sees the wariness underneath it. 

"There's more to it, isn't there?" Darcy guesses. Steve looks at her, and Darcy holds her hands up with a smile of her own. "I don't want to know what it is, I really don't. Just…we're still in a lot of danger, aren't we?"

"Yes," Natasha tells her when no one else wants to speak. 

"Right," Darcy says. "Right. Okay. Got it. So before I freak out, and I'm about to do that right now, I really am, what were we all talking about while I was dreaming about international travel?"

She'd hoped for a discussion of all-expense paid trips to all the cities she'd wanted to be posted in when she became a diplomat/translator/professional international travel writer. Her naiveté is getting a bit ridiculous at this point. Darcy needs to face the idea that she's never going to Paris; she's going to be buried right here on the White House grounds because she either gets too many aliens drunk or accidentally burns down America's most famous building. 

There are more rebellions happening across the world than Darcy can count, and Natasha is insistent on describing them all. It's certainly more than the Bysrah can handle, especially while Tony is still mostly able to stop them being able to coordinate any form of resistance. Darcy tries not to think about all the people who are dying, who are giving their lives for the war she's barely able to fight while she sits here in luxury and is protected by a band of superheroes.

"It's not fair," she whispers in the middle of it. 

"I know, Darcy, I'm sorry," Natasha says, but that doesn't stop her monologue.

Australia is in a complete state of disarray. There's so much space that's impossible to police that even staying to the major cities hasn't helped them keep order. Russia is even worse; there's pride on Natasha's face when she says this. The aliens have been all but driven out of China and India is close behind. 

America, especially with the technology that Tony's been surprisingly successful at smuggling over the borders, is holding itself quite well, but there are still countries small enough, densely packed enough or just plain unfortunate enough to be firmly under the alien's control. 

"What are we going to do about them?" Jane asks, determined in the most frightening way Darcy's seen yet. 

"What we've been doing," Coulson says, and god damnit, where did he come from this time? Actually, considering that his hand is clutched firmly in Pepper's, and that she's blushing faintly, Darcy doesn't really want to know where he was before she saw him. "We're causing surprising amounts of damage, considering that, at least until we moved in here, this was one of their main command centres."

"They've moved everything out already?" Jane asks, disappointed. 

"No, not quite," Natasha says with a Cheshire cat grin. "Clint and I are making a run on the files that are left this afternoon. Tony will be busy making sure that we're not detected, and Maria and Fury are going to be our backup. What were your plans?"

Jane and Darcy make identical faces of concentrated interest; she's so glad they spent a solid week after the New York thing practicing expressions in the mirror, just in case they ever needed to pretend to be twins.

"I'm sure we can think of something," Jane says eventually.

"Do you mind how annoying we are?" Darcy checks. 

"No, not really," Natasha says. Jane holds her hand out to Darcy, and Darcy lets her tug her to her feet.

"In that case," Darcy says primly. "We've got some things to do today. Jane, I'll meet you in your room in twenty minutes?"

"Done," Jane says. She takes Thor's hand as she exits the room. If Darcy hears them having sex when she gets to her boss' room, she's either spraying them with a squirt bottle or joining in the glorious godly sex. 

She hears them having sex when she gets to Jane's room.

"Goddamnit, you two!" She says, banging on the thankfully locked door. "And I don't mean you when I say that, Thor! Get your ass out here, Jane!"

Jane's barely dishevelled when she comes to the door, so Darcy goes ahead and thanks her lucky stars that even Thor can't get too far into it in twenty minutes. Then again, she's had boyfriends that were totally done in that amount of time, so really Jane's got it great, and that just makes her grumpy all over again.

"Life sucks," Darcy tells her, tugging on the silk ballgown she'd decided to wear today. The Bysrah, apparently the ultimate masters of public relations, had supplied them all with clothes and detailed instructions on the kind of events they were to be worn for. Darcy had ceremonially burned the list in her bathroom sink after reading page two, and decided to wear exactly the most inappropriate outfit she could find for every situation.

"Who is he?" Jane asks. Darcy huffs. That's officially it. When she rules the world, she's outlawing the psychic arts. 

"Dr. Hulk," Darcy says. She doesn't want to sound flippant but Jane has the ability to make a mountain out of the tiniest molehill, and she doesn't want to be a part of the gigantically embarrassing scene that'll mean neither of them can look each other in the eyes again. "But it's…"

"Nothing?" Jane asks gently.

"This week's inappropriate crush," Darcy says, ducking her head and kicking out at the trailing hem of her dress. 

"With potential?" Jane probes. The woman's insatiable desire for gossip is so uncomfortable when it's trained on Darcy.

"I don't know yet," Darcy says. She stops, taking both of Jane's hands in her own and tugging until Jane looks at her. "No big deal. Please."

"Fine," Jane sighs. "But if nothing happens I'm still-"

"Setting me up with your nutso cousin, I know."

"He's not nuts," Jane insists. "He's a scientist, he worked for my father."

"Exactly," Darcy says. It's not something she's ever going to convince Jane of, so she gives up before it becomes another one of those long arguments that end with hair remover in shampoo and accidentally replacing someone's perfume with durian juice. "So what are we doing today, exactly?"

Jane holds her bag up with a bright smile. She tosses it at Darcy and okay, it takes a remarkable lack of coordination to miss it from three feet away, but Darcy's always been special that way. The contents are curious as hell when she opens them; a bunch of tightly sealed vials, some cling wrap, a couple of tubes of food dye and several large packs of glitter.

"I don't get it," Darcy says flatly.

"Bad smells in the places they sleep," Jane says, pointing to the vials. "Cling wrap on the toilet seats, food dye in the cistern and glitter on the fans."

"Oh good," Darcy says, deadpan. "We're going back to grade school."

"We want a distraction," Jane says. "We're going to put the majority of these in _our_ living areas, then when we go to complain, we have this."

She holds up a small box, wires extending from every side, curling around each other before winding their way back into the wooden sides. The soft, carved wood looks antique, and Darcy suspects that Jane nicked it from somewhere in the house, and that it's worth more than the salary Darcy and Jane will make in a lifetime.

"Don't tell me what it is," Darcy insists. "I want to be surprised."

"I can do that," Jane says, her eyes doing the Sailor Moon anime thing again.

She'd expected it to be more fun.

"I hate growing up," Darcy sighs. Jane makes a moue with her mouth.

"I know. Remember how hilarious this was?" Jane says, and they both nod mournfully. "All right. Which one of us is going to test this and get upset?"

"Not it," Darcy says automatically, but she goes for the bathroom stall anyway, because Jane's ability to cry on cue was nothing compared to the waterworks Darcy can summon. 

Admittedly it would be easier if she wasn't doing this in a puffy princess dress, but she manages to haul it up around her shoulders by herself. She chokes a little, trying not to smother herself with the fabric that's intent on clogging up her sinuses. She retains enough balance that she doesn't get liquid all over herself, which is a miracle of more than the minor persuasion.

"In retrospect," Darcy says, cleaning herself thoroughly and making a face. "We could have just used coloured water, what with all that food dye you brought."

"That might have been more sensible," Jane agrees. "Are you ready?"

"You know what to do," Darcy says, shaking her arms around a bit. "Don't laugh at me, my drama teacher taught me this."

Jane laughs at her anyway, which is not what Darcy thought best friends were for. She's hypocritical about that, though, so she doesn't shove Jane too hard when they abandon the bathroom for the second part of their plan. 

The Bysrah have a special wing. The humans currently bunking in the White House aren't meant to enter it, if the multitude of signs are any indication. The security has gotten a lot laxer. Darcy supposes she can blame the rebellions for that, and for the first time Darcy wishes there was more danger surrounding her so that she could know that there weren't a hundred more executions going on where she can't see them.

The voices reach the before they can see them. Darcy grips Jane's arm to stop her.

"Sssh," she hisses, so softly she can't hear herself. Jane gets the idea, and she flattens herself against the wall next to Darcy. "Listen."

She doesn't need them anymore, but Darcy's too attached to her camera glasses to get rid of them entirely. She's been carrying them tucked in her bra so she can claim harassment on any alien that tries to confiscate them. It takes a bit of wriggling to tug down the corset on her dress. Jane kindly looks away while she flashes her breasts to an empty hallway, and when this became her trademark Darcy doesn't know, but she's getting _really sick of it_.

The glasses are easily retrieved. Getting the dress sorted again isn't so simple. She has to get Jane to undo it, tug it up and redo the side zip again before Darcy feels like she can walk without a fabric malfunction. 

"I'm thinking of becoming a nudist," Darcy whispers as softly as she can. "I'm spending far too much time with my clothes off." 

Jane smiles tightly. They edge closer to the door, Darcy clutching her glasses tightly to her head. She can't lose them now; it's too important, they _have_ to get this footage. She shudders a little, stifling a sob, and looks desperately at Jane. Jane nods. This might be the worst thing they've done so far and Darcy's not sure it's worth dying for.

Darcy's so nervous that she forgets how to adjust the zoom. It takes thirty seconds of fumbling, time they really don't have. She's almost crying before she gets it right and pokes her head the smallest fraction around the door she can manage while still being able to see. 

"This planet is far more difficult than anticipated," one of the aliens says. It's not doing the waving thing; in fact it looks like it's doing its utmost to be careful, every movement of its arms well thought out and gracefully executed. There's a screen in the room the likes of which Darcy's never seen before. Something like the next generation of Tony's hologram technology, the images appearing solid until the tiniest flicker of light in the corners gives them away. 

"You should proceed as planned," one of the aliens, the second in a trio, says. The aliens in the room shake their heads in unison. The ones on the screen look confused, and through Darcy's fear she wants to laugh at how quickly the invading force seems to have been infected by the people they're trying to conquer. 

"I cannot," another alien says flatly. "I will not. I hate this planet. They are awful people."

"This is why you must continue," screen presence number one says. "It is important that this planet must be civilized. It is not right to the other species there that they are so mistreated."

"We have entirely lost control of one of the countries," room alien number one says. "We are being driven out of three others."

"We can send more forces," screen alien three informs them all calmly. "There are more volunteers who will be pleased to be of service."

"So send them," one of the Bysrah who have so far remained silent says, loudly enough that the rest of the aliens flinch. "I will not do anymore. I have been made intoxicated; it is unpleasant to be so ill. I was almost eaten by a dinosaur. We cannot civilize those, they are extinct, and still I was almost eaten by one. I was covered in a liquid that froze me in place for _three days_. I am going home."

"You made an agreement," screen alien two says.

"We are _losing_ ," room alien four, and Darcy has no other word for it, screams. "If the fighting continues we will not be able to hold on long enough for reinforcements. The integration of those known as The Avengers has not helped as much as we believed it could. They are not cooperating, and we have nothing we can do to prove they are responsible for the things that are going wrong."

"Someone put something over the substandard bathroom facilities we are being forced to use," another one of them whimpers. "I was covered in my own waste. When I went to shower, I was covered in the mourning colour, and when I went to dry myself with a fan I was covered in glitter."

Jane snickers. Darcy swats at her. They freeze, but the aliens inside are so busy venting their complaints that Jane's small noise was, thank all the deities, including the annoying liar one, unheard. Darcy zooms in on the glitter alien and sees that he's right; he's absolutely covered in tiny silver sparkles.

"Vampire alien," Darcy mouths carefully. Jane bites her. She still hasn't forgiven Darcy for making her read Twilight. Darcy's not sure why she's so angry; she got her revenge when she convinced Darcy that 50 Shades of Grey was the best literature since Madame Bovary. 

She refocuses on the screen aliens, who are still trying to convince the ones in the room that a good job is being done. Darcy agrees with some of it, with the eradication of the disease, and the stopping of the wars, but every time she's coming close to being convinced she remembers the despair on the face of the prisoners and her heart hardens again.

"No," the alien in charge says finally. "No, I will not do it. Send your reinforcements if you want, but I guarantee you, they will not win. These 'humans' are a plague on this planet, and like the plague of 887.435.21 the only solution is letting itself burn out, destroying whatever it chooses to."

"That is _unacceptable_ ," screen alien four insists, and at that point all hell breaks loose.

"They are unsaveable," room alien one screams. It sounds painful, his throat clearly unused to being so loud, but when he stands up and starts to stride around the room there's the arm waving and upset chattering that Darcy's been looking for. She hopes its public knowledge by now, because it won't make as much sense to everyone she's going to make sure are watching. "They are _awful_ I have not found a single one that is worthy of our efforts. They are the basest of beings, pathetic, simple, unevolved and they are just…they are unworthy!"

"I will not stay here anymore," another says. Darcy's not sure what the Bysrah version of crying is, but she'd swear that this one is doing exactly that. "I will not help them. They can die on this horrific planet if they wish, but I will not devote any more of my time to them."

"I am withdrawing my volunteers," a final one says. "I will not see any more of them injured or dead. It is a war of attrition, and we are losing. We have given up on planets before; I highly suggest that we do so with these…these _things_."

The screen aliens don't look at each other, but they don't fight back either.

"Give it one full solar cycle," one of them says eventually. "If we make no progress, then we will reconsider. You must work harder at retaining public approval."

"Retaining?" Room alien two says, dropping to the floor in what Darcy hopes is protest. "We have none of it now."

"We have enough," his companion says. "We must not let it drop any further, and then we will have hope."

Darcy turns her glasses off and smiles at Jane. Jane holds her fist out for Darcy to bump, and they are so busy silently congratulating themselves that they forget to run away. They deserve being caught for their stupidity, and doing it when they've just watched a bunch of scary aliens basically comparing them to bugs is far worse.

"What are you doing here?" Alien three demands. Darcy kicks Jane who reaches out for Darcy's upper arm and pinches hard. Darcy whimpers, tears springing to her eyes; she can work with that. She thinks of Bark Simpson, of how alone Bruce must feel all the time and how hard Jane had cried for Thor just weeks ago and bursts into tears.

"I made a mess of myself," she sobs, holding the skirt that she'd liberally drenched in water before she left the bathroom. "I was tr…trying to go, and…and someone p…put something over the seat, and I got my pretty dress all…all wet!" 

Jane pats her back comfortingly, and Darcy turns huge wet eyes to the alien.

"Then when I looked down," she continues, sniffing and rubbing her nose on her arm. The alien winces and Jane tucks her head into Darcy's neck to hide her smile. "It was p…purple, and now I'm af…afraid I'm sick!"

Darcy turns and throws her arm around Jane, giving in to the kind of theatrics that got her the lead role in every high school drama production. It's overdone, way too wet and when she turns her head to peak through her lashes at the alien she sees them buying every bit of it. 

"That is not good," it says through gritted…well, Darcy's been calling them teeth, but really they're more like sharpened orange fangs. "Bad things have been happening to everyone."

"I just wanted to look pretty," Darcy bleats. Jane starts to sniff in unison. Darcy is so proud of her that she almost falls out of character. "We've been so mean to you, and that's terrible!"

"Did you hear what we were discussing?" Alien three demands, and Darcy looks up at it, widening her eyes as much as possible.

"I did, I'm sorry," she whimpers. "I won't tell anyone, I promise I won't."

The aliens let her go with a vow to fix the toilets and get her a dress just as lovely as the one that Darcy ruined. She keeps her promise not to release the footage.

On an unrelated note, Tony hacks into the most complex of the Bysrah broadcast systems and releases it to every still-functioning television. She forgives him for making her see his naked ass, pounding heavily into Steve, when she went to find him.

***

"If I catch Steve and Tony having sex one more time I'm castrating both of them," Natasha grumbles as she slips into Darcy's room the next morning. Darcy has no reason to expect that's how she'll wake up again, but just in case she set the alarm on her iPhone, now restored to near perfect functionality, to wake her up before the dawn.

"How many are you up to now?" Darcy asks, curling up under her blanket. "I think Fury's at eleven, but I'm also fairly sure Tony's purposely trolling him at this point, so I'm not sure that it counts."

Natasha curls up beside her on top of the antique quilt, head resting on Darcy's pillow. Darcy snuggles down a little further and debates giving Natasha a hug, but she's always weary of being the one to initiate contact. The more she hears of the Black Widow the more she thinks it's safer to let Natasha come to her. 

"Sounds like Stark," Natasha says, her breath all minty against Darcy's cheek. "He's either catching them at it or worrying about the diplomatic nightmare of a half-alien baby."

"Since none of us are sleeping with the Bysrah," Darcy makes a face at the thought, because seriously, she's seen them walking around naked, and there's not much to work with there. "I'm guessing you mean Jane and Thor."

"Yes," Natasha says, and she's pulling the face that says Darcy's not going to like what comes next. "The Bysrah have an announcement to make."

"And you want me to get Jane and Thor," Darcy finishes with a drawn out sigh. "Fine. But I want another Thunderer, and I also want S.H.I.E.L.D to back me if I ever run for president. Oh, and a pony. Please."

"Done," Natasha says, patting the top of her head reassuringly. "We have some pull with the state department too, should you want help there…"

"No," Darcy says. She's kicking herself for not agreeing to this right off the bat. "I think I have to do the job thing all on my own."

"I get that," Natasha agrees, climbing off the bed in a fluidly graceful movement that makes her look like a delicate dancing ballerina. "Now get moving."

Darcy groans and takes her time pulling herself out of bed. The shower is practically cold. She's not sure if that's because all the hot water has been used up already (and seriously, who'd have anticipated a lack of hot water heaters at the _White House_?) or because Tony's done something to piss everyone off again, but she can't waste as much time as she wanted in there, either.

Perusing her closet's no better. She's out of ball gowns, and not knowing what she's going to be listening to makes it hard to decide what's going to be truly inappropriate. In the end she dresses for comfort: a ratty pair of jeans, dirty converse and one of Tony's t-shirts with a hole cut out for the arc reactor, all things she'd smuggled in when she'd gotten here. 

Which leaves Jane and Thor. Darcy really doesn't want to see it. 

She'd be stunned, at this point, if she'd approached their room and not heard the rhythmic thumping that signalled yet another marathon sex session that puts even Darcy's vibrator, powered by Energizer, to absolute shame. 

She ignores the do not disturb sign on the door, because this isn't a hotel and Darcy isn't their maid. She wrenches on the door handle, trying to break it open. For once they've forgotten to lock it, because the door opens in Darcy's hand and she makes a disgusted face as she shoves the door inward.

Something crashes against it. Jane and Thor jump from their place on the bed. Their fully clothed place on the bed, Jane's head pillowed on his chest and a book of Norse poetry in Thor's hand. His voice trails off, the accents strangely musical, and looks at Darcy with an amused smile.

"You _assholes_ ," Darcy giggles, ducking into the room and closing the door behind her. "What the hell?"

She almost trips over the thing that the door caught. It's a tape recorder, Jane's voice coming through clearly in between Thor's grunts. Jane's hand is thumping against the wall in time to Thor's words, and there is no sign whatsoever that they've been doing a damn thing.

"I don't think Bysrah reproduce the same way we do," Jane says with a wicked grin. "Sex freaks them out."

"So you've been faking it all this time? Damn," she says, sprawling over Thor's feet and reaching for the book. "Why couldn't one of you taught that trick to Tony and Steve?"

"I attempted it," Thor says, his face twisting miserably. "I saw things that I wish never to see again."

"You deserved it," Darcy informs him. She pats his leg so he knows she's not too mad, but Darcy's smarter than this. How the hell did she miss it? "Anyway, you guys need to get up. There's another announcement or something, and we've all been summoned to the press briefing room."

"Are we the audience or the example?" Jane worries. Darcy squeezes her hand, ignores the way Thor's gotten there first and their fingers are all tangled together. She doesn't know the answer, a feeling she's coming to despise, but they've gotten this far and Darcy's not going to leave so many people she cares about alone now.

They're the audience. It's not as great as Darcy had hoped it would be.

She's forced to listen to every advance they've made, to watch pictures of the children who've been cured of cancer, the third world countries who have good food and health care, the list of people who were on the transplant list and now have perfectly functional organs. Jane's crying next to her, but Darcy feels too numb to cry. Nausea is a different thing; Darcy forces a swallow, trying to stop her stomach from releasing its contents. 

Steve's closest to her; she wants to reach out for comfort, to take his giant hand in hers. She shoots him a look, but he's focused so hard on the presentation that he doesn't see her at all. Darcy doesn't think he can see anything; he's so deep in confused rage.

"Will you stop your rebellion?" The Bysrah addresses all of them, although he lingers the longest on Steve and Fury. "Will you allow us to help you to always live like this?"

"No," Steve says. He's angry, so angry that Darcy instinctively flinches away from him. This brings her closer to Natasha, and that doesn't look like the best thing for Darcy's continued safety. Natasha's a second away from defecting, Darcy can feel it in her bones, and she pleads with her eyes to let it go, to give them some sort of united front. 

Natasha's glare is hard and unforgiving, but once again she agrees, giving Darcy the smallest of nods. Darcy doesn't think that her grateful smile is thanks enough. Natasha's matching one is tight, and Darcy can't begin to understand how much this must be costing her.

"As you wish," the alien says, a threat as much as it is a promise. "Then you will have what you want. We will begin our evacuation of the planet."

The alien looks at Darcy as he says it, and she feels a sinking in her stomach. She doesn't know if the talking alien heads are agreeing, but she suspects that's not much the point anymore. This is what they'd planned what feels like months ago, in Jane's lab in New Mexico, and there's no way it should have worked, except here they are, watching the alien flick a switch on one of Tony's contraptions - something that makes Tony jump angrily in his seat - and send out a broadcast.

Darcy's the only one who notices, in between the cheering, the whispering and the general sense of satisfaction that's spreading its way through the room 

"It took us all night to discover this," the Bysrah tells them, poking at the metal box. "I am sure that you will have something new by the time we are done, but that does not matter now. I would hope that you would allow us the dignity of our own announcement, but I don't believe any of you hold the integrity necessary for that."

The Bysrah's announcement is short, to the point and ends with the same sort of guilt trip they tried to inflict on the Avengers. The message is simple:

We are leaving, and so is all the good we have done for you. 

She snags Tony as he makes to sneak off with Steve. She doesn't get why they bother, can't understand why they think any part of it is still a secret. 

"It's complicated," Steve says when Darcy won't stop staring at them and she nods.

"I get it," she tells him. "And I'll bring him back. I just need his help with something. It shouldn't take long."

"If it's sweet, sweet loving," Tony says as Darcy drags him away. "I should tell you that I'm a bit tired out, Super Soldier stamina, you get it. But if you wait for tonight...ow. Really? You hit me and still expect my help?"

"Really," Darcy agrees, because he deserved that slap. "That's not what I want. It's hard to explain, and I'll need you to keep your mouth shut for a bit. I'll let you make the announcement if you agree to that, deal?"

"Deal," Tony says, because he's easily distracted and once you've caught his attention you can get him to do just about anything. "Where are we going?"

Darcy smiles.


	5. Epilogue

**[Guide (549.03.0001): Earth/Midgard/Gaia/Terra]**  
Current population: 7 billion (approx) dominant, innumerable other.  
Governmental Structure: Fractured

_"Earth" is a midsized planet, populated by diverse lifeforms. The dominant species is currently believed to be "humans", a savage group that currently comprises approximately 7 billion individuals. The land is separated by continents/islands, with no current unifying government. They have not yet progressed past tribal warfare stage, the medical infrastructure is substandard and laws favour warfare and injustice._

_Intervention is unwelcome and ineffective. Furthermore the dominant species is actively disruptive and violent over all attempts to do so._

**Recommendation:** Evacuation. Keep all personnel and technology away from the planet on a permanent basis.   
**Prediction:** Eventually the human race will develop space travel. The Makers help us all.

Epilogue: The Formation of the Superheroes for Gender Sensitivity

"God it's good to have real vodka back," Darcy says contentedly, tilting her head back and letting the last few drops of the best screwdriver she has ever tasted land on her tongue. "I don't care what I made Tony promise me. Lewis' Luscious Liquor is officially declared the worst alcohol on the face of the planet, and I am discontinuing production."

"I was getting used to it at the end there," Jane says, hanging over the edge of Darcy's recliner. She's flushed with drink and her speech is starting to slur, but that's the funniest thing about Jane drunk: she could get given a field sobriety test right now and still manage to walk in a straight line, stand on one foot while touching her nose and recite the alphabet backwards.

"That was the point," Darcy says, wrinkling her nose when she discovers her that her glass is empty. She thrusts her hand out to Natasha who pours a generous amount of Russian vodka into it, and then passes it to Maria who adds the required orange juice. "I just don't think I can inflict that kind of sorrow on the world."

"There are worse sorrows," Natasha says in the tone of someone used to experiencing all of them. She's not quite so used to the hug that Darcy and Jane tackle her with, nor being joined, after a pause, by Pepper and Maria, but the smile on her face more than makes up for that. "All right, you're squashing me. Off."

"Don't wanna," Darcy says cheerfully. Natasha lifts her off, and where is she hiding all that strength? It's incredible.

"Are you sure you haven't stolen Steve's super serum?" Darcy asks apprehensively.

"I've always wondered if that can be shared," Jane says. She's got her notebook out, the one that Darcy is so used to seeing filled with star charts and equations that she can't understand at all. Now it's got new things in it: a picture of Thor and Loki with a palace sketched around it; a picture of Steve and Bruce, with DNA molecules in strange patterns; a diagram of Tony's arc reactor. 

"Through blood transfusions?" Maria asks, hovering over her shoulder. She traces some of the pencil lines with her fingers, like they make sense to her. Darcy's a graduate student; she's getting sick of being the dumbest person in the room. 

"Or semen," Jane suggests absentmindedly, still flicking through her research. 

Darcy puts it down to the vodka, and the beer before that and the absinthe bombs before that, but not even the most serious of them are able to prevent helpless giggles. Jane looks perplexed, her mind still stuck on the science of it all, and Darcy fights to catch her breath so she can explain it.

"That would make you part god now, wouldn't it?" Maria says. Poker faces must be taught in secret spy training, she's totally serious when she says it, and the realisation on Jane's face is chased quickly by her blush. 

"The last thing Tony needs," Pepper tells them all sternly, taking a long swallow from her booze-filled coffee mug. "Is super powers. If any of you suggest any way for him to obtain them, all oaths we've sworn to each other are off. I will find a way to end you."

Darcy stays silent. She's made it through an alien invasion, a month living with people who prove that superheroes are, by law, unable to be at all sane and she's just about to head into another bout of celebratory alcohol poisoning. She's not about to die by a pissed off Pepper Potts, it would be too cruel.

"I'll help," Maria says, a little pale. She puts down her glass with a loud thunk, the orange liquid sloshing on to her black uniform. "Oh _god_ , they're hard enough to deal with as it is."

"I think it'd be funny," Darcy mutters, but she doesn't say it loud enough for any of them to hear her. She's got at least half her glass left, though she's rapidly losing her taste for it. She feels foul, dizzy and melancholy. She's meant to be celebrating, to be _happy_ but even she has no warning when she bursts into tears.

"Oh, sweetie," Jane murmurs, climbing off Darcy's chair and stumbling the few steps to Darcy's side. "It's all right. I'm here, honey, we're all here."

"I just…" Darcy whispers, leaning over so that her tears aren't quite so obvious. "I want to go outside. Can we go outside?"

"Sure," Jane says, rubbing her hand up and down Jane's back. "In fact, I've got a surprise that's been waiting for exactly the right moment. I think this is it, don't you?"

Darcy watches as Jane rummages through the bags of things they managed to collect; she's positive she's not the only one who secreted a few things she shouldn't have out of the White House. They should have a show and tell at some point, when Steve's not around to look all disappointed and sad and make them all want to take it all back. 

She finds the box. The one Jane had dragged along as a distraction and never used. Darcy looks down at her drink and tries to figure whether she's had enough of this to think it's a good idea. Jane pushes a button on the side of the cube of mystery and something inside it starts to glow. A thrum of excitement bursts in Darcy's chest. Yep, she's definitely drunk enough for this.

The last of the glass is emptied into her open mouth, the tiniest bit of it dribbling down her chin as she swallows. Just in case.

"This is another one of those things I'm not meant to see, isn't it?" Maria says, more comment than question. Natasha leaves the half-empty bottle she's been serving them out of on the floor as she follows them, patting Maria reassuringly on the shoulder.

"You're supervising a scientist who's a possible risk to national security," Natasha points out. "It's part of your job."

"I could probably get away with that," Maria says thoughtfully. She looks relieved; Darcy hangs back and links her arm through the not-so-scary agent's. 

"You need to have more fun," Darcy advises. 

"There's not much time for that," Maria says, and yeah, there's the regret that Darcy's been keeping an eye out for.

"Get transferred out here," Darcy says. "There's a whole new race of aliens out there, and you know Jane's got some of their tech hidden somewhere we don't want to think about. She's sure as hell not getting any saner, so why not assign someone to her that she's not going to try and get arrested for theft, arson or accidentally e-mailing proprietary secrets to their grandmothers just because they touched one of her science thingies?"

"Science thingies?" Jane shrieks. Darcy waves her hand at her outraged boss.

"I'm not one to judge," Darcy says breezily. "I'm just the one who has to plant all the incriminating evidence."

Jane doesn't look mollified, and Darcy stops, putting her hands on her hips. 

"I _liked_ the last one, what was his name? Shithead, Sithlord?"

"Sitwell," Maria says. Darcy snaps her fingers.

"That's the one!" 

"He's still in counselling," Maria continues. Darcy glares at Jane, but if her boss had been unapologetic when it first happened, Darcy doesn't think she has the best chance of making her guilty six months later.

"That was Jane," Darcy says.

"That was Darcy," Jane says at the same time. Darcy makes a loud noise of outrage, the sort that, if she had to quote it, would best be described as _'!!!'_.

"We're perfectly aware of who it was," Natasha says. That doesn't really make Darcy feel any better. She pokes Jane in the side, a pointless gesture considering how bony Jane's hip is. It ends up giving Darcy a sore finger, and if history is any indication, Jane will barely have a bruise by morning.

"Behave yourself or you don't get to see," Jane threatens her. 

"Liar," Darcy complains. There's no way that Jane would risk losing any of her fawning audience, or the raving on her brilliance that invariably comes afterwards. Just to be safe, Darcy refrains from complaining more while Jane searches the meagre backyard that's seen more than its fair share of insanity for the perfect space for her experiment.

Apparently finding it on the spot that had also seen the great bonfire of Halloween 2011 and the loud drunken rant of February 2012, she sets the box on the ground and takes a few steps back. Darcy waits expectantly, shifting back and forth on her feet, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. It's surprisingly cold in the desert at night. She'd stripped off her top layers when the alcohol started heating her up, and now she regrets leaving the warm sweater inside.

"Now what?" Darcy prods when Jane stays, staring blankly at it.

"Thor should see this," she decides. Her eyes are twinkling. No, they're blazing with the sort of joy that only comes when Jane's worked something special out, perfected an idea that was going to change the world. Darcy presses her hand to her throat and stifles a squeal, all traces of cold gone.

"Oh my god," Darcy whispers reverently. She bounces over to Jane, takes both of her hands in her own and bites her lip. Jane will be heartbroken if she's wrong, but if she's right it deserves all the happiness Darcy can muster. "You did it. You did, didn't you?"

"It was something Loki said about the Bifrost, and something else Erik e-mailed me about the portal, then Tony let me play with his arc reactor technology…I had to steal some things from the Bysrah, too, and I can't be sure of their accuracy," which isn't the yes or no that Darcy expected, but it's close enough. Darcy throws her arms around Jane's shoulders and squeezes as tightly as her weak muscles will allow. Jane finishes her answer over Darcy's shoulder, addressing it to the sky, and to the stars she's loved for so long. "I did it."

They dance around the outside of the lab that's housed so many hours of Jane's work, and holds all the hopes and failures that have driven her for longer than Darcy's known her. She holds her hand up so Jane can do a little twirl under her arm, a short pirouette that's perfectly executed and painfully graceful.

"At least," Jane adds when they stop, dizzy. "I think I did it."

"Close enough," Darcy says while she still has the giddy courage. She raises her voice, and apparently her happiness is infectious, because Maria isn't calling for backup to have them all shot, and Natasha's recently restored weapons remain sheathed. "Thor! Godly dude, bring your ass out here!"

The speed with which Thor appears, his brother inexplicably handcuffed to his right wrist, is magnificent. Jane throws herself at him and bestows a kiss more passionate than their first goodbye lip lock on his smiling lips. When Loki makes a face Pepper thumps him, the first sign of violence that Darcy's seen from her. Darcy beams in her direction, and Pepper raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow.

"I know," she says, and there's a hint of a smirk that Darcy adores. "You're proud of me."

"So proud," Darcy confirms. 

Steve and Tony have followed Thor, and soon they're all out there, watching as Jane plays with her weird ass box, pressing buttons and rearranging wires. Her excitement has given way to nervous energy; Darcy can see it in the tense lines of her back, her shaky hands, and how she keeps returning to Thor for reassuring touches and kisses.

"Do I want to know what we're doing here?" Fury asks. Maria smiles blandly, innocent and calm. Darcy is signing up for spy training, just so she can be that convincing when she next attempts to cast more than one vote in her sci-fi club yearly elections. 

"I'm sure you'll be pleased, Sir," Maria says. 

"Do I not get a hint, my Jane?" Thor asks playfully. Loki gags, using his free hand to form a noose over his head. Darcy's shocked that Thor doesn't just hit him and she can't quite work out whether Loki's absorbing Earth culture by osmosis - unlikely, considering most of it has been unavailable - or whether annoying the crap out of your sibling is exactly the same whichever planet you come from. 

Jane tilts her head at him and frowns. Thor moves to comfort her, and is tugged back by Loki who is digging his heels in the sand and refusing to move. Darcy rolls her eyes. She's not the only one. Around the haphazard circle that's formed most of them are making some expression of disgust. In deference to Thor she doesn't result to more physical violence, a restraint she thinks she deserves a medal for. 

"If you could talk to your father," she hedges, as though this was an entirely new subject. "What would you say?"

Thor looks nervously around at all the people watching him. Darcy is so used to him bucking stereotypes that she laughs at this, the image of the strong warrior prince unable to vocalise his feelings in public.

"I have written a letter," Thor says with a tight smile. "One that explains…well, many things, Jane, must I say them aloud?"

"No," Jane says, and her smile is lively and seductive. She holds out her hand to him, palm up. When he doesn't move to give it to her, she strokes his cheek and steps on her tiptoes, whispering in his ear. "Trust me."

Thor does, reaching into the pocket of his sinfully tight jeans and sliding out a ragged piece of paper. Jane snags it carefully, more gently than she treats any of her own possessions, and places it on the ground. Around it she draws a circle, nudging at feet and ankles until they move out of her way. There are no symbols or runes, nothing to indicate she's doing anything more than playing in the sand.

Next to that she adds another box, smaller than the last, made entirely of metal. It has a few buttons of its own, but it lacks the designs and the wires, and all the messiness that Darcy's come to associate with all of Jane's best inventions. On top is another note; even from here Darcy can see Jane's chicken scratch writing showing through the folded paper, written in her favourite dark purple sharpie. 

She has a wire; Darcy hadn't noticed it before, all twisted up into a strange necklace she's been wearing. She unwinds it slowly, laying it on the ground in the line she's drawn. When she gets to the end, where the box resides, she plugs both edges of the wires into metal pieces hanging out each side.

"Jane," Thor says reverently. Her smile, when she turns it on him, is bright as the sun.

"Thor," she replies spiritedly. "You'll want to stand back."

They all do, edging further away until only Jane is close. She kneels down in front of her strange box and holds her hands to her chest. Darcy knows she's not praying, neither Thor nor Loki give any indication of feeling it, but Darcy can guess how much she's hoping it's not all about to go wrong again.

"I can do this," Jane whispers. Darcy hears it, faintly, on the night breeze. She doesn't have the courage to get closer, to comfort Jane in this. She doesn't have time to regret it, either, because Jane takes a deep breath, presses a button and jumps away from the circle.

Nothing happens at first. Loki starts to laugh until the wind starts to pick up, blowing dust around the wire circle. It's not like the Bifrost, not quite, but the beam, when it hits, is almost enough to blow Darcy off her feet. It lasts only a fraction of a second. When it fades away, dying down into a swirl of sand, the letter is gone, as is the top layer of dirt. 

"Are we supposed to believe that was sent to Asgard?" Loki says scornfully. 

"Believe whatever you want," Jane says poisonously. She twitches a little. Darcy figures she'd hoped for a little PDA time from whatever Thor is to her. Darcy's not quite blond and ripped, but she gives Jane a hug anyway, because she believes in everything now, and she knows, more than she knows her own name, that Jane's done it.

"What now?" Steve asks, diplomatic as always. 

"Now we wait," Jane says, her hand clutched tightly in Darcy's shirt. She's caught some of her hair in the fist too. All of Darcy's attempts to gently dislodge it are ineffective. She gives up; she's still tipsy enough that the pain isn't so bad, and she can feel the agitation in Jane's body. If she pushes too hard Jane will lose it; it's not a malicious thing, but Jane doesn't do too well when she's really overwhelmed, and Darcy doesn't want to see a temper tantrum, as spectacular as it'll be.

"We still have some fireworks," Clint suggests. "We, uh…commandeered them for your own safety last time we were here, but I'd say we've earned a bit of a celebration while we wait."

Tony seconds the motion, and apparently that's all that's really needed to make things go boom. They're damned good fireworks, too; Darcy had spent the last of her vacation money buying them from a stall near the border and she'd made sure to pick only the best and brightest the surly vendor had left to offer.

Tony sets them off in patterns. The first is a display of red, white and blue intermingled with red and gold. It might be the closest thing he's ever made to a love letter. Darcy's not the only one who 'awws' when they work it out. Steve doesn't blush. He's getting better about that, and as far as Darcy can tell there's very little anyone can do to embarrass him anymore.

She's going to test that one day. It might not be a full on flashing, but she'll be able to figure something out.

"Keep away from my super soldier," Tony tells her in between fireworks. 

"Keep out of my head," Darcy shoots back, poking him on the nose. He goes cross-eyed trying to look at it, and they both laugh. Darcy kinda, sorta loves him, in the terrible influence of an uncle way. She'll buy Pepper apology flowers later. "You're an asshole, Stark. Never change."

"Never will," he says happily. Steve's come up behind him. The kiss the blond presses to Tony's neck is clumsy, almost messy, but it's a public display of affection and it deserves the high five she offers him. Tony pokes at her, a soft finger in the side, and she tilts her head up at him, a question on her face. "We're adopting you. You don't get a choice in this. You're going to be our first child, and live with us in New York and go to all my shareholder meetings for me."

Darcy considers the offer. There'd be large amounts of fun there, especially if Pepper doesn't kill her for saying whatever she wants to the old farts who consist of the rest of the board of directors. Then she looks at Jane, hovering around Thor like the earth circles the sun while trying not to get too close to Loki, and at the soft lights of Puente Antiguo. It would also be a half-decent use for her degree, not the entire waste she's been so afraid it would end up.

She turns her head to the lab, and Isabella's, and all the adventures that she never thought she'd be allowed to have.

"Nah," Darcy says, and it's here again, the happiness that she's been missing since the damned aliens showed up. "I like it here. And someone has to feed and walk Jane; she'll forget there's an outside if someone doesn't remind her."

"Bring her with you," Tony suggests. Darcy just shakes her head, beaming at all the wonderful things her life holds for her.

"No, she'll never leave," Darcy says, sure of it. "Not while Thor can come, and all the people who've told her she's wrong are too far away to keep doing it. But I'll visit. And you'll come here, because you can't stay anywhere for too long, and Steve will never forgive us if we don't see him often."

"It's true," Steve agrees, his arms wrapped around Tony's waist. It's the cutest thing Darcy's ever seen, the way Steve's face softens in the firelight and Tony's restless energy just…stops, letting him relax back against Steve's huge chest for long enough to get another kiss.

"Aww," Darcy says, because she'd be the world's worst kid if she didn't torment them mercilessly. "No, wait, ew. You can't do that in front of me."

"Shut up, Darce," Tony whispers.

"So which one of you is Mom and which is Dad?" She asks, as the fireworks change from the Iron Man/Captain America show to something she assumes is meant to represent Thor and Jane: bright reds, whites that somehow almost look silver and Jane's favourite shade of pink lighting up the night sky.

Darcy almost feels like dancing, and almost is good enough for her. It's the same victory dance that she'd done when the aliens first arrived, but the elation in that is nothing to what she feels now. As she twirls she sees flashes of everyone; they're all talking, or laughing, or kissing, or fighting, and so wrapped up in each other that Darcy's the only one who sees Jane's box flash again.

She's whirled around again before she notices and she misses the exciting bit. Stopping herself is nearly impossible. Darcy falls to her knees, skidding on the sand. When she looks up he's there: a tale, imposing man with one eye, the other covered with a silver eye patch. She's so surprised that she gasps, and the man gives her a small smile, striding over to help her to her feet.

"You mean there are two of you?" Darcy exclaims, her brain to mouth filter rendered silent by the combination of alcohol and giddiness. "It's the eye thing, isn't it? You have to lose one to look that badass."

At least she's amusing, Darcy thinks absently, because he's laughing at her rather than pulling the impressive looking weapon he has at his side. She looks helplessly towards her distracted teammates, the noise of the fireworks just overhead ensuring that none of them have noticed a damn thing.

The best spies in the world, and Darcy's the one who catches this. Life is so far past bizarre that absurdity may as well be back in the dark ages.

"Uh, Thor?" She calls, her voice louder than she'd intended. Thor looks at her, at her companion, and his face lights up with delight.

"Father!" He cries out. Darcy had gotten that, she'd be ridiculously ashamed of herself if she hadn't, but once again she's managed to insult a god and from what she's read this is the one you really didn't want to.

Well, the second, but it's impossible to meet Loki without insulting him in some way.

Thor sprints over to his father, dragging his handcuffed brother along with him. When Thor hugs him, hearty and happy, Odin embraces both of his sons. Loki doesn't make the face she's used to, shows no sign of disgust. He refuses to look at his father at all, and Darcy thinks it might be shame that turns his face away rather than contempt.

"My sons," Odin says deliberately. "I am glad to see the both of you well, and successful."

"I do not fight on this planet alone," Thor says, proud. She sees everyone stand up straighter, the formal training that she and Jane have missed coming to the forefront. Jane is shuffling quietly away, and Darcy joins her, taking small, quiet steps until they are far enough away to be able to run. They race until they're out of breath, a distance nowhere near as great as it should be, and collapse together behind Isabella's. 

"Not ready to meet the parents?" Darcy puffs. Jane's head is in her hands, and Darcy thinks she's laughing until she sees tears starting to drip between her fingers. "Woah, hey! Look what you just did! You invented instantaneous interstellar travel. You proved every dickhead who told you you couldn't do it wrong. What's this all about?"

"I'm just being stupid," Jane says. Her smile is soggy when she peeks up at Darcy, but it's still a smile, and that's some small relief. "I've been trying so hard, and now…"

"You don't know what else to do?" Darcy guesses.

"Something like that," Jane admits. Darcy pushes Jane's hair back from her face so that it doesn't get any wetter and grins.

"You could always get that extra doctorate. You're interested in super soldier semen now, right?"

Jane hits her. Darcy deserves it.

***

Darcy doesn't bother to go back with Jane when the tears stop. She figures it's more a meet the family type deal, and as much as she loves the lot of them, she's not really one of them. She should be more bothered by that, but Darcy's getting a pretty good idea of her limitations. She gets wanting to be a super hero, but if someone offered her a radioactive spider or some other random scary thing she'd probably turn it down.

Normal is awesome. Superhero friends are crazy enough for her.

She ends up falling asleep against the wall outside Isabella's. It's not the most dignified thing she's ever done, but it's not the least, either, so she chalks it up to a draw on the embarrassing moments of her life list and mentally shrugs her shoulders. She's starving, dirty and sore. Since she can only chose one of those to fix at a time she chooses breakfast and follows the scent of bacon on the wind.

Thor's cooking. His father looks like he's been hit in the head with a brick. Loki's chained to her chair, and if they're going that far, it's entirely possible he did hit his father in the head with a brick.

"Dysfunctional," she says to Jane wisely, like either of their families would qualify as anything else. Jane ducks her head, and from behind the curtain of her hair Darcy hears the faintest of snorts.

"It's not what you think," Natasha says. Darcy steals a piece of her bacon to munch on while she drags one of the heavy, usually unused dining chairs from the stack near the fridge.

"What is it?" She asks. She barely has a chance to sit down before Thor's putting a plate of eggs, pancakes and beautiful, beautiful bacon in front of her. "Oh my god, that's good. You should be a chef or just Jane's live in slave, because her cooking may as well be poison."

Odin chokes a little. Darcy blanches, gives him her best _I'm adorable and lovable and please don't kill me_ smile.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean you god," she babbles. This is why she shouldn't be allowed to talk, ever. "I mean my god. Not that I believe in god, but the expression of the Christian god which is technically blasphemy, and I promise Jane isn't trying to poison you."

"I'm really not," Jane offers, poking half-heartedly at her pancakes. She has fruit on hers, strawberries in the shape of a heart. Darcy glares at Thor out of principle and holds her plate up until he gets it. When it's returned to her she has a smiley face made of blueberries, which makes it officially the best breakfast she's ever had.

"You are a prince, my son," Odin says, although he sounds more intrigued than angry.

"The other prince tried to escape," Natasha says, bringing it back to Darcy's first question. That explains the bruise on his eye and the part where Odin, King of the Norse gods is occasionally attempting to spoon food into his mouth. Loki is choosing obstinacy; he keeps his mouth firmly closed each time.

Darcy looks at Pepper, and Pepper looks at Darcy. It's hard to challenge someone like Pepper with just her eyebrows, but she manages to successfully make her point. She's still surprised when Pepper does it, which is ridiculous in hindsight. The woman worked with Tony Stark for more than a decade. Nothing can embarrass her now.

She picks up a forkful of eggs and, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear, she angles it towards Loki's mouth.

"Make way for the spaceship," she says casually, like feeding gods is something she does every day. "Be a good boy. We don't want to have to put you in the naughty corner again, do we, like the last time you were bad?"

Loki opens his mouth. They call him Loki Silvertongue, Darcy remembers. He doesn't get a chance to use that tongue to eviscerate Pepper before she slides the fork in his mouth, dumps the eggs and pulls it back out. Maria gets up from the table with an abrupt scrape of her chair; Darcy's not sure where she's going, but she'd be willing to bet there'd be an awful lot of laughter on the other end of it. 

"My wife used to do much the same thing," Odin says. He still looks terrifying, but his face holds a hint of misty remembrance. "Although she would say to beware the invading army, lest they steal your food and leave you to starve."

There's a long silence. Darcy's not too interested in feeling sorry for Loki, but for a second she gets it, gets the way the wrong sort of love could just crush you. Thor's laughing, because for him it's a good memory, one that forged the strength he carries with him like a shield. Loki…well, he's an asshole, and she doesn't forgive him for any of the shit he's pulled, but she feels bad for the little boy that wasn't amused by warfare.

"Isn't it interesting how some traditions are the same, regardless of culture?" Coulson says gamely. More respect to him; Darcy would have gone something like _you're all terrifying, and I'm kidnapping Thor before you can corrupt him further_ , but instead she watches Jane's growing misery and chooses something else.

"When are you going home?" She asks, directing her question as much to Thor as to Odin. "Not that we don't love having you here, but it's been a pretty quick trip the last couple of times, and it'd be nice to be able to plan these things."

Thor and his father look at each other for what feels to Darcy like a long time, but that's probably one of those relative things where she's so invested in that she's subconsciously holding her breath while she waits. More than once she's passed out from it, and as entertaining as it is in retrospect, this is probably not the best crowd. 

"We have a reliable method of moving between realms now," Odin says. He's watching Jane while he speaks, pride, approval and what resembles affection on his face, so Darcy feels confident in assuming that she's gotten the parental seal of approval there. "It matters less that Thor travels here, and if we are truly lucky our dear…Doctor, is it? Doctor Jane will occasionally accompany us, and help us rebuild our broken Bifrost."

Jane gapes, her jaw glued to her chest. Darcy reaches over the table and covers her mouth, just in case the ear-splitting screech is the next step. She shudders when Jane licks her palm and yanks her hand away, wiping it on her jeans.

"Ew, ew, ew," she groans. "That'll never wash off, you know. Scientist cooties!"

"Hey!" Three different people at the table object.

"I'm sorry, Bruce," Darcy says contritely. "The rest of you deserve it, you're evil."

"Thank you," Bruce says. His smile is warm and shy, and damnit, there is that crush again. Those brown eyes are too adorable for Darcy's own good. 

"Your mother is excited to see you again," Odin tells his youngest child. Loki's lips twitch. It's almost a smile, and that's almost affection there. Darcy's not at all shocked that there's a Mama's boy hidden under all that jerkiness. 

"And Thor?" Jane asks in a small voice. Odin smiles, the one-eyed mysterious bastard one that Fury is so good at. Fury himself looks…star struck is the only word she can think of for it. Darcy suspects that there will be more than one intergalactic visit made in the coming weeks.

"Come, my sons," Odin says. Thor leans over Jane and kisses her lightly on the lips. Darcy watches, speechless with shock and rage as he just _turns and leaves without saying goodbye_. Darcy moves to comfort her. Natasha and the newly returned Maria are closer, both of them locking their arms around Jane and shielding her from the sight of Thor's retreating back.

"He…" Darcy forces out. She's hit more than one person in her life, she's kicked and bitten, but if Thor was here the knife she stabs violently into the table would have been directed into his godly groin. Outside the light flares again. Jane sobs, once, heavy, before she is distracted by footsteps walking back in through the door. 

Huh. Thor. 

Jane struggles past Natasha and Maria's tight grip and throws herself at Thor. Thor catches her in mid-air, swinging her around and laughing.

"You did not think I would go so easily?" He asks her, his hands dwarfing her face as he cups it. "Now that you, my clever one, have found such an effective way back?" 

"It was a stupid thought," Jane agrees. They kiss; it's not quite Princess Bride level romantic, but it's close and Darcy feels a little queasy looking at it. 

She takes her breakfast and, in silent agreement with the ones who are left, she walks calmly outside and invades Tony's trailer. Tony finds this acceptable, and showers them all with gifts, which is a nice thought, even if most of them are just stuff he has lying around and have been deemed inappropriate for new inventions. 

"Now what?" Steve asks when the food is gone, and they've all gotten sick of raiding Tony's personal belongings for shiny fun things.

"Zombies," Tony predicts. "They'll go after me first, what with the biggest brain and handsomest face. You'll be next, Bruce, we should be prepared for that, a Hulk zombie sounds fun, but he's got a big enough appetite as it is…"

Pepper throws a pillow at his head. He dodges it, and when he comes back up he's smiling at her, she's smiling at him and it feels like a nice peace to Darcy, something they can keep.

"If you've jinxed us into that, Stark," Fury tells him, adjusting his black eye patch. Darcy expects it'll be silver soon enough; she'll have to start a pool to see who can guess the closest day. "I will hunt you down and turn that brain into a pin cushion for my embroidery."

"You embroider, Sir?" Maria chokes on the last of her orange juice. 

"I'll learn," Fury promises. 

Darcy leans back on Tony's bed and cuddles Mr. Muggles, rescued at the same time they went back to find Mjolnir. The sun outside the window is rising bright and warm. Darcy smiles; she can't see any ugly naked aliens, but just in case they're still watching she puts her middle finger up at the glass, grabs a pair of tweezers from her pocket and pulls out her final tracker.

***

When Facebook officially comes back up the first thing Darcy sees is Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are It's Complicated. Eventually Thor will win the bet on when it will change to In A Relationship.

Darcy's first status update will be: 

**Darcy Lewis:** is glad that Jane's boyfriend has a god-sized penis, but DID I HAVE TO SEE IT ON MY CHAIR? I hereby pray that never happens again.  
 **Thor Odinson:** Is fascinated by this Facebook. And will have his paramour stop paying Darcy Lewis' wages if she continues to interrupt intimate moments. 

Her second one will be: 

**Darcy Lewis:** totally stole a bunch of alien healing technology before they left the planet. The first Avenger to claim it will get full access.  
 **Tony Stark:** was meant to get that announcement. Damn you, Lewis!

Bruce will friend her and like all of her statuses for weeks until she finally gets an e-mail.

__**YOUR QUESTIONABLE TASTE IN MEN**  
From: Tony Stark (tstark@starkindustries.com)  
To: Darcy Stark (dstark@startindustries.com) 

_Darling Daughter,_

_Set up a proper e-mail address for you, and forwarded it to your g-mail account._

_Since Bruce is too much of a coward to e-mail you himself, I'm going to do it for him._

_First you should know the following:_

_You're still an only child. Pepper has made me sign a contract stating that I may not create, build, adopt, steal, obtain or otherwise come into possession of any more of them, so you're it. Since I'm pretty sure that means I'm responsible for your education I've paid off your student loans, and set up an educational trust fund that will pay you an allowance monthly._

_If you don't use at least half of it for alcohol, parties or generally making mischief I will be greatly disappointed in you._

_Pepper is on vacation with Phil. She won't tell me where she is. I think I may have accidentally sold the company to Bruce's dog last night while trying out super soldier strength whiskey. (Did you know that if you pay people enough money they'll go hunting through Rio de Janeiro for one specific dog? Money is awesome.) I expect a spectacular stock drop tomorrow morning._

_If Pepper kills me, avenge my death. I'm building a suit for you to do it with._

_Steve says hi, and don't listen to anything I say._

_Anyway, back to the point. Bruce is too chicken shit to do this himself, so next time you're in New York - you free next week? I'll buy you a ticket - you're going out with him. If you're feeling particularly generous, you'll let him see your boobs. Wait, no, that might raise his heart rate too much, start with flashing some ankle? I don't know, you'll think of something._

_Catch you soon, buttercup!_

_Tony_

Darcy will send just three paragraphs back.

__**Re: YOUR QUESTIONABLE TASTE IN MEN**  
From: Darcy Lewis (dstark@startindustries.com)  
To: Tony Stark (tstark@starkindustries.com) 

_Daddy Dearest,_

_Fuck off and die. I miss you all, and I can't make it next week, I'm going to Mexico with your money. We're out of fireworks. I'm on/in/all over/whatever kink he's into Bruce, and if you tell him that I'm tattling to Pepper._

_Darce_

**Darcy Lewis** : is seriously reconsidering her choice of parents.

__**Dinner**  
From: Bruce Banner (bbanner@starkindustries.com)  
To: Darcy Lewis (dstark@startindustries.com) 

_Darcy,_

_To get Tony off my back, I thought I'd ask you to dinner. I'm sorry he's been harassing you, I'd never expect you to do anything you didn't want to._

_Bruce_

__**Re: Dinner**  
From: Darcy Lewis (dstark@startindustries.com)  
To: Bruce Banner (bbanner@starkindustries.com) 

_Bruce,_

_I want to. I'll see you in New York in two weeks. Tony's paying._

_Darcy._

_P.S. Read that journal article you published. Congratulations on cracking the tech so quickly! Is Tony or Pepper funding the company that gets all the new medication out?_


End file.
